Olive View Ucla Medical Center

A public-private contract to allow postgraduate physicians from Cedars-Sinai Medical Center to work at Olive View-UCLA Medical Center was approved unanimously Tuesday by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors. The program will enable the physicians to receive training not available at Cedars-Sinai, according to the county Department of Health Services, while providing Olive View-UCLA Medical Center in Sylmar with three additional doctors at a cost to the county of $9,000 a month.

The psychiatric emergency services at two county-run hospitals are so overcrowded that mentally ill patients have to sleep on mattresses on the floor, health officials acknowledged this week. The packed conditions at Olive View-UCLA Medical Center and Harbor-UCLA Medical Center make it more difficult to de-escalate the emotions of patients who arrive at the hospital agitated and anxious, said Christina Ghaly, deputy director of strategic planning for the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services.

Los Angeles Police Cmdr. James T. (Tim) McBride will receive an annual community service award given by a nonprofit, Sylmar-based health education foundation. McBride was awarded the Olive View-UCLA Medical Center Foundation's Nelle Reagan Award for Distinguished Community Service. McBride is a member of the foundation's board of directors and lives in the Valley.

Los Angeles police have arrested a 17-year-old exchange student from South Korea in connection with a schoolyard fight in Sylmar that left a 19-year-old friend dead. The exchange student, who was not identified because of his age, was arrested on suspicion of assault after Jin Su Lee, also an exchange student from South Korea, died of head injuries after the two exchanged blows at First Lutheran High School in Sylmar. A law enforcement source, speaking on condition of anonymity because the investigation is ongoing, said initial indications show that Lee started the fight, and the 17-year-old responded with a few blows about 2:50 p.m. Tuesday during a physical education class on the football field.

Although flames had chewed through the power lines that serve the Olive View-UCLA Medical Center, staff members thought that they would be fine. The hospital prided itself on its "state-of-the-art" backup systems. But wind-whipped flames and choking smoke brought Olive View to a dark standstill early Saturday as the hospital lost power and its emergency generators failed. "It was total darkness," said hospital spokeswoman Carla Nino. "We had our flashlights. We went into our disaster mode."

Sheriff's deputies and paramedics rescued a 10-month-old Palmdale boy who had nearly drowned in a bucket of water and household cleaning fluid Thursday, the Los Angeles County Fire Department said. The boy was in "critical, very guarded" condition Thursday evening, said Earl Jones, a nursing administrator at Olive View-UCLA Medical Center in Sylmar. The toddler fell head first into the half-full five-gallon bucket at his home in the 1600 block of East Avenue R-7 about 12:40 p.m.

The Olive View-UCLA Medical Center Foundation is honoring its most famous volunteer, Nelle Reagan, this weekend to commemorate her 15 years of service during the 1940s and 1950s. The late mother of former President Ronald Reagan earned admiration from hospital administrators and others for befriending tuberculosis patients despite the risk of contracting the contagious disease. "She's a symbol for our time in representing a person who puts aside the risk to her own self," said Dr.

Los Angeles County Sheriff Sherman Block brought a proposal to the Board of Supervisors on Tuesday for a child abuse evaluation team to be established at Olive View-UCLA Medical Center in Sylmar. Although the supervisors said they supported the team in concept, they said they would not consider whether to provide $248,000 needed to fund it until they continue their budget deliberations later this week.

Small amounts of liquid and vapor mercury were released when a machine used to sterilize surgical instruments at Olive View-UCLA Medical Center exploded, L.A. County health officials said Thursday. None of the three employees near the equipment was injured. John Wallace, spokesman for the county Department of Health Services, said the area in the hospital basement where the explosion occurred Wednesday afternoon has been sealed off.

Olive View Medical Center in Sylmar received a new name Tuesday in recognition of its affiliation with UCLA. The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors unanimously voted to rename the hospital Olive View-UCLA Medical Center, as requested by the county Department of Health Services. The department said the relationship with UCLA's School of Medicine had increased since the hospital was opened in 1987, particularly after perinatal services were added.

In a written response to allegations of substandard care at Olive View-UCLA Medical Center's neonatal intensive care unit, Los Angeles County health officials said they found "little about the allegations" to be correct. County health officials addressing an anonymous complaint to an accreditation agency said seven of 11 allegations made could not be substantiated. Officials found that hospital staff provided and received cosmetic services at Olive View, but said "the investigation has dispelled the claim that an organized cosmetic operation on the scale of a 'beauty salon' has existed in the NICU."

State regulators said Tuesday that they plan to inspect Olive View-UCLA Medical Center as soon as possible, following admissions by hospital and county officials that they did not know the neonatal intensive care unit had been downgraded for more than a year and a half. County health officials announced a shift in policy Tuesday, even as they continued to say the county-run facility in Sylmar was allowed to care for seriously ill babies despite what the state called a "critical medical staffing deficiency."

Los Angeles County officials have placed two staff members at Olive View- UCLA Medical Center in Sylmar on paid leave after allegations that they had participated in a makeshift beauty salon atop medical equipment in the ward for high-risk newborns, according to county officials. The county this week also opened an investigation into broader allegations that doctors, nurses and staff at the neonatal intensive care unit put babies at risk through substandard care. The allegations were contained in two anonymous complaints received by the commission that accredits the facility.

Although flames had chewed through the power lines that serve the Olive View-UCLA Medical Center, staff members thought that they would be fine. The hospital prided itself on its "state-of-the-art" backup systems. But wind-whipped flames and choking smoke brought Olive View to a dark standstill early Saturday as the hospital lost power and its emergency generators failed. "It was total darkness," said hospital spokeswoman Carla Nino. "We had our flashlights. We went into our disaster mode."

An L.A. County coroner's spokesman confirmed Tuesday that a 33-year-old man who collapsed and died last month after waiting more than three hours at Olive View-UCLA Medical Center to be treated for chest pains had had a heart attack. The county-run hospital in Sylmar had failed to administer a simple test to check whether Christopher Jones was having a heart attack when he walked into the emergency room Oct. 28.

A Los Angeles County hospital has opened the first clinic in the country devoted to studying and treating Chagas disease, a deadly parasitic illness that has long been the leading cause of heart failure in Latin America and is now being seen in immigrant communities in the United States. Unless Chagas is treated early, little can be done to halt its advance.

The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously this week to seek bids to repair $2.7 million in structural steel damage to the sixth floor of Olive View-UCLA Medical Center. An inspection by the county Department of Public Works found the damage shortly after the 1994 Northridge earthquake, according to Dennis Morefield, a spokesman for the county. He said the most extensive damage is contained in the Sylmar hospital's sixth-floor structure.

In the early days, it was called a sanitarium. "But a better term might have been a prisob," said Irwin Ziment, medical director of Olive View UCLA Medical Center, which has been celebrating its 75th year this week. There were speeches and cake Friday to honor the hospital that has been transformed into a modern facility from a collection of wood-frame buildings where the sick and dying tuberculosis patients were forced by law to stay.

A nurse at Olive View-UCLA Medical Center who failed to administer a critical test to an emergency room patient complaining of chest pains was fired Wednesday, county health officials announced. Christopher Jones, 33, died several hours after arriving at the Sylmar hospital last Sunday. He was never given a test to check if his heart was functioning properly, in spite of describing pain in his chest and arm.