Olive View Ucla Medical Center

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.

As a young nurse's aide, Gloria Muetzel had little emergency experience. But during a night shift at Olive View Hospital, Muetzel got a dramatic lesson: The 1971 Sylmar earthquake rocked the second-floor psychiatric unit where she worked, bringing it crashing to the first floor. Muetzel is still at Olive View, despite the nightmares that persisted for years.

He hit the garage floor hard but didn't feel the impact. Sixty-year-old William Boyer was having a stroke, and the left side of his body had gone numb. Unable to speak or move for several minutes, he eventually managed to cry out a few garbled words. By chance, a neighbor heard.

Despite major layoffs of doctors and nurses last fall, three Los Angeles County hospitals apparently have been re-accredited by a Chicago-based hospital inspection agency, county health chief Mark Finucane said Thursday. The Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations approved three-year recertifications for County-USC Medical Center in Boyle Heights, Olive View-UCLA Medical Center in Sylmar and Harbor-UCLA Medical Center in Torrance, Finucane said.

The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors has agreed to pay more than $1 million for brain damage sustained by a premature infant after a county nurse accidentally injected the child with more than 70 times the prescribed amount of a nutritional supplement. Arturo de la Torre, who is now 2, suffers from cerebral palsy as a result of the overdose at Olive View Medical Center/UCLA in Sylmar.

The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday settled a lawsuit that contended that a child died after a physician at Olive View / UCLA Medical Center in Sylmar misdiagnosed the child's illness. The family of 3 1/2-year-old Michael Rafaeloff will be awarded $212,500. Supervisors unanimously approved the settlement without discussion.

The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday settled a lawsuit that contended that a child died after a physician at Olive View/UCLA Medical Center in Sylmar misdiagnosed the child's illness. The family of 3 1/2-year-old Michael Rafaeloff will be awarded $212,500. Supervisors unanimously approved the settlement without discussion.

In what some health officials called a highly unusual--and apparently illegal--action, doctors at UCLA-Olive View Medical Center in Sylmar treated a sick baby chimpanzee, brought in by movie makers, in the hospital's emergency room last Saturday night. The 2-week-old primate, which was treated by physicians in a vacant area of the emergency room, later died of an unspecified illness it had suffered from since birth, said Carolyn Rhee, Olive View's chief operating officer.

In what some health officials called a highly unusual--and apparently illegal--action, doctors at UCLA-Olive View Medical Center treated a sick baby chimpanzee, brought in by movie-makers, in the hospital's emergency room Saturday night. The 2-week-old primate, treated by physicians in a vacant area of the ER, later died from an unspecified illness it had suffered from since birth, Olive View chief operating officer Carolyn Rhee said.

Keeping a promise to the federal government to shrink Los Angeles County's hospital-heavy health system, the Board of Supervisors on Tuesday unanimously approved a new round of layoffs at three county hospitals that will cost about 400 health workers their jobs early next month.