Medical Care

Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, one of the Los Angeles County health network's most heavily used facilities, is poised for a major expansion that planners hope will greatly relieve overcrowding. County supervisors voted Tuesday to approve the final piece of a $333-million plan to expand the Torrance facility's emergency department and renovate the surgical ward. The emergency room will grow from 25,000 square feet with 42 bays to 75,000 square feet with 80 bays, providing enhanced privacy.

Advocates for more than 130,000 elderly and disabled recipients of in-home supportive services filed suit Thursday in federal court in San Francisco to block about $82 million in state budget cuts that would eliminate or drastically reduce their services. The suit is the latest example of legal challenges and administrative appeals that may delay tens of millions of dollars in expected budget cuts to health and human services, from adult day care centers to respite and home health aides.

Los Angeles County health worker Leonardo Rincon lifts the birth certificate up to the light and expertly scrutinizes it. Do faint watermarks show up? Yes. He rubs his thumb over the official seal to see if it is raised. It is. He checks the number of digits in the document number. Perfect. Ruth Torres, he decides, has brought in valid U.S. birth certificates for her six children, a valid U.S. passport for her husband and a valid green card for herself, a legal immigrant from Mexico.

A nurse rocked him awake as pale dawn light crept into the room. "C'mon now, c'mon," the nurse murmured. "Time to get up." Reggie Lane was once a hulking man of 260 pounds. Friends called him "Big Dad." Now, he weighed less than 200 pounds and his brain was severely damaged. He groaned angry, wordless cries. The nurse moved fast. Two bursts of deodorant spray under each useless arm. Then he dressed Lane and used a mechanical arm to hoist him into a wheelchair. He wheeled Big Dad down a hallway and parked the chair in a beige dining room, in front of a picture window.

A psychiatrist who treated a pregnant Anna Nicole Smith for drug withdrawal testified Monday that the model said she was willing to "do anything" for her unborn daughter but ultimately walked away from a plan to break her dependency on prescription medication. Ten months after the hospitalization described by Dr. Nathalie Maullin, the 39-year-old former Playboy playmate died from an overdose. Prosecutors are pursuing charges against her boyfriend, Howard K. Stern, and two physicians for conspiracy to illegally provide her with prescription medication and other charges.

A federal judge Monday blocked California from cutting in-home care for 130,000 elderly and disabled state residents whose services would have been reduced or eliminated Nov. 1. U.S. District Judge Claudia Wilken in Oakland issued a preliminary injunction against $82.1 million in cuts, siding with the plaintiffs' argument in a class-action lawsuit that the state's method of determining whose services would be affected was unfair. "We're very relieved," said Melinda Bird, senior counsel for Disability Rights California and an attorney in the case.

The family of a 52-year-old Huntington Memorial Hospital nursing assistant who had a stroke a week after she was attacked by a patient has filed a claim in a state workers' compensation court, saying she was unfairly denied medical coverage. Amelia Mendoza, who has four adult children, had a massive stroke April 20, about 2 1/2 hours after being turned away from Huntington Memorial Hospital's occupational health clinic because it was too busy, her family's lawyers said Tuesday.

A Chinese immigrant held at a privately operated detention center was denied medical care, abused and accused of faking his illness in the weeks before he died of cancer, according to a lawsuit filed by the man's widow. Hiu Lui "Jason" Ng, a 34-year-old computer engineer accused of overstaying his visa, died of liver cancer in August, weeks after being taken to the Donald W. Wyatt Detention Facility in Central Falls. His cancer went undiagnosed until days before he died. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement determined that Ng was mistreated and denied access to medical care.

Re "Injured civilians battle to get care," April 17 At first, I was shocked and appalled to read about the civilian contractors' struggle to receive their much-deserved benefits. Now I'm no longer surprised -- just outraged. It makes no sense that companies like insurer American International Group can dole out bonuses, yet can't seem to pay for the horrendous injuries sustained by workers in Iraq. What makes it so tragic and pathetic is that these are seemingly commonplace stories in our time.

A U.S. Navy vessel has rescued 52 people from a boat that had been adrift for a week in the Gulf of Aden, infamous for pirate attacks and the deaths of hundreds of Somali migrants trying to reach Yemen. A Navy statement said the crew of the cruiser Lake Champlain provided medical care to the men, women and children, some of whom were dehydrated, after rescuing them Saturday.