Hospitals

The Clinton administration granted final approval Monday of a $364-million bailout for Los Angeles County as part of a five-year effort to transform the nation's second-largest public health care system from heavy reliance on hospital treatment to an emphasis on community-based preventive care. U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala delivered the long-awaited word that the county's request to become a national demonstration project for health care reform had been approved.

The UCLA Medical Center will receive a total of $432 million from the Federal Emergency Management Agency to repair damage from the 1994 Northridge quake, university officials announced Tuesday. UCLA had been negotiating with FEMA for more funds since March, when the agency initially granted the medical center $294 million. The final grant amount provides UCLA with less than half the $935 million officials estimate is needed for the repair and replacement of buildings in the medical complex.

Law enforcement officials in Los Angeles County announced new procedures Wednesday for collecting evidence in sexual assault cases in which the use of disorienting and sometimes lethal "date rape" drugs is suspected. Beginning immediately, hospital caregivers are being asked to collect urine samples from rape victims and police officers are being trained to look for evidence of these potent, invisible drugs when investigating a sexual assault.

Twice a week Martine Benatar offers young patients at Long Beach Memorial Medical Center the one thing nearly everyone around them takes away: freedom. A volunteer art therapist, Benatar totes pastels, markers and paper from one bedside to another, providing children with serious illnesses creative control over their own artwork. In the process, say her colleagues at Miller Children's Hospital, Benatar gently coaxes out valuable expressions of children's fears about hospital life.

Despite the combined forces of a last-minute court injunction and an impassioned rally by its faithful and well-heeled clientele, the Westlake Medical Center's emergency room will remain closed, the hospital's owner said Wednesday. A Los Angeles County Superior Court judge ordered Columbia/HCA to keep the hospital open for two weeks while Salick Health Care continues to negotiate with the Tennessee-based conglomerate to buy the 25-year-old facility.

Roscoe and Rosie each weigh 600 pounds and they're less than 5 feet tall, but that doesn't stop them from being Danbury Hospital's most productive workers. For 12 hours each day, seven days a week, they haul meal trays from the basement kitchen to the patient floors. They cost the hospital just $6 an hour each with no overtime, and they never complain. They're not superhuman. In fact, they're not human at all.

As Cynthia Pepping stepped up to the bedside of 80-year-old heart patient Edward Kirby, she went through the time-honored rituals of nursing. She put him at ease, inquiring about his comfort, then took his temperature and blood pressure. Clad in hospital scrubs, she looked just like a nurse. But she isn't a nurse. Pepping, 24, is an unlicensed hospital worker, one of a growing number who are doing bedside patient care once performed by registered nurses.

It was midnight on May 15 and Kathie Gayle had just finished caring for no fewer than 11 seriously ill patients during her nursing shift at Inglewood's Centinela Hospital Medical Center. When Gayle, a licensed vocational nurse, left that night, her legs ached so badly and her ankles were so swollen that she wondered how she would manage the walk across the parking lot to her car. But things were to get worse.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency will announce today $459 million more in quake repair and seismic upgrade grants for Los Angeles-area hospitals, bringing the total announced in just the last week to $833 million, sources said Monday. The UCLA Medical Center is slated to receive $294.4 million, St. Johns Hospital in Santa Monica $133.5 million and Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in West Los Angeles $30.9 million. These figures are on top of a $409.

Medical student Kirsten Truman's future was handed to her Wednesday in a plain white envelope in front of a balloon- bedecked plaza packed with family and friends. It was a tense moment, but one that ended with an exhilarated shout from Truman, who hopes to become a family doctor in a rural community. "I'm so happy," said Truman, 31, after learning that she is headed to Merrithew Memorial Hospital in Martinez, Calif., after graduation to pursue the next vital step of her medical training.