Hospitals

The PSA test should be abandoned as a prostate cancer screening tool, a government advisory panel has concluded after determining that the side effects from needless biopsies and treatments hurt many more men than are potentially helped by early detection of cancers. At best, one life will be saved for every 1,000 men screened over a 10-year period, according to the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force. But 100 to 120 men will have suspicious results when there is no cancer, triggering biopsies that can carry complications such as pain, fever, bleeding, infection and hospitalization.

Dodgers second baseman Mark Ellis returned home from the hospital Thursday, five days after undergoing emergency surgery on his left leg. Ellis was injured last Friday when Tyler Greene of the St. Louis Cardinals slid into him at second base. The next day, Ellis had fluid and blood drained from his leg. The procedure was required because the pressure on Ellis' muscles and joints was building. Team physician Neal ElAttrache told Dodgers Manager Don Mattingly that Ellis was several hours away from losing the lower part of his leg. Ellis is expected to be sidelined for six weeks.

How can you tell if you or someone you know is having a heart attack? Sometimes the symptoms can be surprisingly subtle. "They can be very different from person to person, between women and men and even within an individual who has more than one heart attack," says Dr. David Rizik, director of Interventional Cardiology for Scottsdale Healthcare Hospitals, in Scottsdale, Ariz. Men and women may experience atypical heart attack symptoms. In contrast to the "classic" chest-splitting, gasping-for-breath symptoms, many heart attacks begin with symptoms that are so mild they are often mistaken for indigestion or muscle ache.

A man was recovering Monday after a fight in a Dodger Stadium parking lot following Sunday's game, renewing questions about how quickly and effectively security responds once a game ends. The fight began about 9 p.m. after a minor traffic accident. According to Los Angeles police, Arthur Morales, 30, knocked the victim to the ground while his pregnant girlfriend watched, stunned. At that point, Morales' friends got out of the vehicle and joined in. "They held the victim down on the ground and ... the fourth one kicked and punched him in the head," LAPD Cmdr.

Raymond L. Johnson Sr., an attorney, civil rights activist and former Tuskegee Airman, died Dec. 31 in Los Angeles of complications of pneumonia and heart failure, said his wife, Evelyn. He was 89. Johnson, who practiced law for nearly 50 years, was a leader of the Los Angeles chapter of the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People in the 1960s and 1970s. After the 1965 Watts riots, he provided free legal assistance to African Americans who were wrongfully arrested during the disturbances.

Tom Taylor learned a lesson about healthcare finances when he had both his knees replaced a couple of months apart at separate hospitals in Northern California. The tab at the first hospital was $95,000, but the second cost $55,000. The same doctor performed identical surgeries on both knees, and Taylor says he can't detect any differences between the two. "Nobody knows what it costs," said Taylor, 53, a former health insurance sales executive. "There is a complete lack of transparency in the healthcare system."

Robert F. Kennedy Medical Center in Hawthorne announced Thursday that it will shut down Dec. 31, becoming the sixth Los Angeles County emergency room this year to close its doors because of financial problems. The move will force patients to find another hospital just as the flu season hits and underscores the strain facing the county's teetering emergency medical system.

UCLA's hospital system, whose recent financial performance has lagged far behind its four University of California counterparts, has hardly any cash in the bank and is looking to turnaround specialists to lift its income. The largest medical system in the UC chain, UCLA Healthcare reported lower net income than its sister campuses last fiscal year and as of Dec. 31 had only $20,000 cash. By comparison, UC Davis had $183 million in cash, the most systemwide.

After eight nights in the hospital for debilitating headaches, Laurel Carpenter was ready to go home and finally get what the doctor ordered -- a good night's sleep. From a private room in a Los Angeles hospital last summer, Carpenter had endured a torrent of interruptions and noise that could wake even the sedated.

A 1999 study from the Institute of Medicine reported that avoidable medical errors contributed to tens of thousands of deaths in U.S. hospitals each year. A dozen years later, quality of care remains a problem, according to a new study. In the April issue of the journal Health Affairs , which focuses on medical error, a team of researchers affiliated with the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, a think tank in Cambridge, Mass., report that the number of "adverse events" in hospitals -- injuries caused by medical error rather than patients' underlying conditions -- might be 10 times greater than previously measured.

Question: My wife and I recently returned from a nine-day trip to London, and we noticed that all the hotel staff was from non-British European countries and a few from countries in Africa. We also noticed that all the staff at the restaurants and some of the staff at the pubs where we ate and enjoyed their ales were from other European countries. Is this because these are jobs British workers do not want to do, or are there other reasons for this? Ben Juarez Los Angeles Answer: If you don't believe London is a world city, take a look at its restaurants.

Cycling on the streets of Los Angeles has never been for the faint of heart. The roads are crowded. Drivers are distracted. Potholes can be perilous. So can car doors, suddenly swung open. Even the mayor is not immune. Two years ago, when a taxi pulled out in front of him on Venice Boulevard, he flew off his bike and broke his elbow. It's no wonder some cyclists seek out whatever help they can get — be it designated bike lanes, bike paths or even bike blessings. On Tuesday, as part of Bike Week L.A., dozens of cyclists rode to Good Samaritan Hospital for the ninth annual Blessing of the Bicycles.

A historic — and some say haunted — Los Angeles hospital that has been closed for two decades is set to be converted into apartments for low-income seniors in a $40-million makeover. Linda Vista Community Hospital is an imposing relic from the days when railroads took care of their sick and injured employees in company facilities. Originally known as Santa Fe Coast Lines Hospital, it was built for employees of the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railway in Boyle Heights, a blue-collar neighborhood east of the city's rail yards and home to many railroad workers.

Diane Rodrigues sang, prayed and bounced on her bed during the night at Metropolitan State Hospital. A nurse assigned to keep her under constant watch sat by, occasionally dozing. By 7 a.m., the 52-year-old psychiatric patient was lying motionless on the floor, her neck broken. It took at least an hour for caregivers at the Norwalk mental hospital to glean the extent of her injuries. It took four more hours to send her to a trauma center for treatment. Rodrigues, a former kindergarten teacher, was left paralyzed after the November 2009 accident and died six months later from related respiratory complications.

State regulators determined that a Redding hospital owned by Prime Healthcare Services Inc. violated patient confidentiality by sharing a woman's medical files with journalists and sending an email about her treatment to 785 hospital workers. In a report issued this week, the California Department of Public Health found that Shasta Regional Medical Center had five deficiencies related to the unauthorized disclosure of medical information on a diabetes patient treated there in 2010.

SACRAMENTO — A labor union that pushed a pair of ballot measures that would have reined in excessive hospital billing and expanded healthcare for the poor has dropped them — in exchange for an agreement that enlists the hospital industry in the union's organizing efforts. The agreement, announced late Wednesday, ends a months-long public battle between the Service Employees International Union and the California Hospital Assn. Private hospitals had accused the union of using the initiative process as leverage in contract negotiations to expand its membership, a charge the union strongly denied.

Last year, the good folks at Soliant Health -- a healthcare staffing firm -- took it upon themselves to rank the 20 most beautiful hospitals in the country. The list was subjective, of course, but the judges clearly put some thought into their selections. Check out the Cinderella-castle quality of No. 1 pick Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore; the one-acre rooftop garden at No. 6 St. Louis Children's Hospital; the lodge motif at No. 10 Mat-Su Regional Medical Center in Palmer, Alaska; and the hotel feel of No. 17, Sacred Heart Medical Center in Springfield, Ore. This year, Soliant asked readers of its blog to nominate and vote for the country's most beautiful hospitals.

Northern and Southern California have long argued over which one has the best sports teams, nicer climate and most stunning scenery. When it comes to healthcare, however, there's little debate: It costs a lot less to be hospitalized in the Southland. On average, hospitals in Northern California's six most populous counties collect 56% more revenue per patient per day from insurance companies and patients than hospitals in Southern California's six largest counties, according to a Times analysis of state records.

Talk about a bad trip. It started when Daniel Chong, a 23-year-old UC San Diego student, spent a night with friends to mark April 20, which some pot afficionados consider something of a holiday. It ended with an ordeal behind bars. The Drug Enforcement Administration apologized Wednesday to Chong, who was "accidentally" left in a holding cell for five days and reportedly drank his own urine to survive. San Diego attorney Gene Iredale said his client was "still recovering" from the ordeal.