Hospitals

More than 100 people were taken to hospitals and dozens were arrested during a two-day electronic music festival at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum and at Exposition Park, authorities said. The 14th annual Electric Daisy Carnival, which featured carnival rides, five stages and performances by Moby, Will.i.am, Steve Aoki and Deadmau5, drew a total of 185,000 people on Friday and Saturday, said Alexandra Greenberg, a publicist for the event. Because of the size of the event, paramedics were stationed at an on-site command post, Los Angeles Fire Department spokesman Devin Gales said.

Two nurses examined an earthquake victim writhing in pain inside a yellow triage tent recently on the lawn of Redlands Community Hospital. They suspected the woman had head trauma, a broken leg and internal bleeding as part of a disaster drill that morning for a magnitude 7.9 earthquake. The 229-bed facility was running on two generators after losing power, and the nurses needed to get her inside the hospital and into intensive care. Trouble was the hospital gurneys were too heavy for the damp grass and they couldn't roll them to the triage tent.

After James Holmes allegedly opened fire on an unsuspecting crowd watching a midnight showing of “The Dark Knight Rises” in an Aurora, Colo., movie theater, 12 people were dead and an additional 59 were injured, according to authorities. Many of the victims were rushed to the University of Colorado Hospital in the dark of the night, and others were taken to the nearby Children's Hospital Colorado, where they received treatment immediately. Lou Lazatin, president and chief executive of St. John's Health Center in Santa Monica, spoke with The Times about a hospital's responsibility to respond to a crisis like this.

Hospital chain HCA Holdings Inc., under government scrutiny for allegedly performing unnecessary surgeries and other medical procedures on some Florida patients, has posted healthy profits at its three hospitals in Southern California. The Nashville company said in a securities filing Monday that officials with the U.S. attorney's office in Miami had requested information about medical necessity reviews for certain cardiology services. HCA said those reviews had occurred at about 10 of its hospitals, primarily in Florida.

Federal regulators investigating serious failings in UC Irvine Medical Center's anesthesiology department threatened to cut off Medicare funding after identifying dozens of new problems within the hospital. In a 127-page report, regulators described repeated examples of poor oversight and inadequate systems to protect patients. In one case, a psychiatric patient urinated on a pile of bed linens because the audio equipment used to monitor seclusion rooms was not working, according to the report.

State public health officials have fined 12 California hospitals for medical errors that hurt or killed patients, according to a report released Wednesday. Three of the hospitals — L.A. County/USC Medical Center, Torrance Memorial Medical Center and Brotman Medical Center — are in Los Angeles County. The penalties were issued for errors such as leaving foreign objects in patients' bodies during surgery and administrating the wrong medication. They occurred in 2009 and 2010.

The California Department of Public Health on Wednesday issued $25,000 penalties against 13 hospitals -- including seven in Los Angeles and Orange counties -- for serious violations that, in some cases, led to patient deaths. Each violation comes with a $25,000 fine, part of an ongoing effort to hold hospitals more accountable for placing patients at risk of death or serious injury.

On Long Island, N.Y., hospitals are scrambling to bring extra workers in to handle a 50% surge in visitors to emergency rooms. In Galveston, Texas, the local hospital ran out of flu testing kits after being overwhelmed with patients worried about having contracted swine flu. At Loma Linda University Medical Center near San Bernardino, emergency room workers have set up a tent in the parking lot to handle a crush of similar patients.

Four major Los Angeles hospitals are expressing alarm over plans to shut down the 405 Freeway through the Sepulveda Pass for 53 hours next month, saying transportation and law enforcement agencies have not adequately prepared for getting medical employees to work on time. The unprecedented closure, required to demolish a bridge as part of a widening of the 405, is expected to cause major delays. It has prompted some institutions in the area — including the Getty Center museum and the Skirball Cultural Center — to close during the July 15-18 weekend.

Only 16% of U.S. hospitals surveyed in a recent study gave a complete price quote for a common hip surgery, highlighting the obstacles many patients face in comparison shopping. Pricing information remains difficult to obtain from medical providers and the figures that are quoted vary widely despite government efforts to make the process more consumer friendly, according to a study published Monday in the Journal of the American Medical Assn. for Internal Medicine. Jaime Rosenthal, a student at Washington University in St. Louis who led the research, called two hospitals in every state and Washington, D.C., as well as the top 20-ranked orthopedic hospitals according to U.S. News and World Report.