University Of California At Los Angeles Medical Center

After struggling for months with wobbly finances and internal dissension, the director of UCLA Medical Center announced Tuesday that he will leave his job to take a top post at the University of Kentucky's medical center. Dr. Michael Karpf, 58, has been with UCLA since 1995 and oversaw the school's three hospitals and 18 primary-care clinics.

For more than 2 1/2 years, Farrah Fawcett's battle with cancer has sparked a flurry of headlines for celebrity tabloids. But it has also stripped the actress of her ability to seek treatment while maintaining her privacy, she said in an interview.

At 8:43 a.m. March 28, 1991, two UCLA campus police officers responding to an emergency call found a burly young man lying face down outside of Boelter Hall. He had jumped from the roof of the nine-story classroom building; at 9:23 he was pronounced dead at UCLA Medical Center. His name was Tony Lamadrid. A coroner's report included this notation: "This 23-year-old male with a history of depression and schizophrenia was being treated for same at UCLA Medical Center Psychiatric Department . . .

Marines and soldiers who suffered disfiguring injuries in Iraq and Afghanistan are receiving advanced plastic and reconstructive surgery at UCLA Medical Center under a partnership between the center and the military's top hospital for burn victims. So far, five Marines and four soldiers have undergone surgery at UCLA. One was injured in Afghanistan, the others in Iraq. More patients are scheduled to arrive in coming weeks.

Reacting to the perils facing the nation's academic medical centers in a turbulent period of cost-cutting, UCLA Medical Center has agreed to acquire Santa Monica Hospital Medical Center, a well-regarded community hospital, for an undisclosed sum. The UC Board of Regents is expected to approve the proposal when it meets this afternoon in San Francisco, officials of both hospitals said.

UCLA's neuropsychiatric hospital has banned all cellphones and laptop computers after a patient posted group photos of other patients on a social networking website, officials confirmed Monday. Dr. Thomas Strouse, medical director of the Resnick Neuropsychiatric Hospital, said in a statement that the decision was part of "UCLA Health System's ongoing efforts to enhance patient privacy and confidentiality in compliance with California's patient rights law."

UCLA will rename its renowned medical center after Ronald Reagan as soon as friends of the former president fulfill a pledge to donate $150 million to help rebuild the hospital, which was damaged in the 1994 Northridge earthquake, officials announced Wednesday. Reagan supporters have already raised $80 million for the eight-story building, designed by celebrated architect I.M. Pei, and for a separate Reagan library foundation.

The financial condition of UCLA Healthcare, the largest medical complex in the University of California system, is deteriorating rapidly, and it will soon eliminate about 400 full-time positions to improve its bottom line, according to university officials. In addition to the immediate financial difficulties, construction on new UCLA hospitals in Westwood and Santa Monica is running behind schedule and over budget.

Dr. Jonah Odim says he walked into a "hornet's nest" four years ago, and the hornets keep following him wherever he goes: across the Canadian border and over state lines, from Georgia to California. Despite his stellar credentials--his Yale education, his Harvard and University of Chicago training--the 43-year-old cardiac surgeon keeps getting stung by questions from 1994, that horrible year in Winnipeg, Canada, in which 12 of his tiny surgical patients died.

How do you mend a broken heart? Dr. Hillel Laks does it at a moment's notice, rushing to a surgical suite at UCLA Medical Center, where he works feverishly over a single, silent heart--freshly removed from a donor--while, nearby, a very sick person awaits a second chance at life.

In the 10 days since one of the worst commuter rail accidents in California history, the region's trauma surgeons have reknit shattered limbs, repaired battered organs and returned dozens of patients to homes and families, where many will now face weeks or months of painful recuperation. Twenty patients remain in the region's hospitals as a result of the Sept. 12 head-on collision between a Metrolink commuter train and a Union Pacific freight train in Chatsworth.

On Sunday, 2,100 doctors, nurses, technicians and managers at UCLA Medical Center will participate in a task of epic proportions: moving to the gleaming new hospital across the street. Although the distance is short, the details are daunting. The shift to the new Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center will require military-style precision.

An influential U.S. senator sent a series of letters Friday seeking additional details about four liver transplants at UCLA Medical Center involving patients who were suspected members or associates of Japanese organized crime groups. "While surgeons do not seek to pass moral judgment on the patients they treat, Americans hope at the very least that foreign criminal figures wait in line along with the rest of us," Sen. Charles E.

California health regulators have connected 14 more people affiliated with UCLA Medical Center, including four physicians, to the improper viewing of celebrity medical records, bringing the number of current and former workers apparently implicated in the snooping scandal to 68. The additional violations came to light in a report by the California Department of Public Health, which was sent to the hospital Friday.

When penalties were handed out for snooping in UCLA's medical records, it paid to have an M.D. after your name. As a group, doctors at UCLA hospitals who wrongly peeked at the records of pop star Britney Spears got off lighter than other staffers, according to reports released Friday by state health inspectors.

UCLA's neuropsychiatric hospital has banned all cellphones and laptop computers after a patient posted group photos of other patients on a social networking website, officials confirmed Monday. Dr. Thomas Strouse, medical director of the Resnick Neuropsychiatric Hospital, said in a statement that the decision was part of "UCLA Health System's ongoing efforts to enhance patient privacy and confidentiality in compliance with California's patient rights law."

Ten of 12 young children who underwent heart surgery and died at a Winnipeg hospital in 1994--under the care of a physician now at UCLA--might have survived if given proper treatment, a report released Monday said. "The evidence suggests that some of the children need not have died," Associate Chief Judge Murray Sinclair wrote in his final report, following one of the longest inquests in Canadian history. The children, operated on by Dr.

A whistle-blower lawsuit by two former University of California employees alleges that the university's five medical centers--at UCLA, UC Irvine, UC San Diego, UC San Francisco and UC Davis--billed the government for millions of dollars in fraudulent insurance claims.

Forget about the steamy scenes in the television shows "Grey's Anatomy" and "ER." In a Los Angeles courtroom this month, allegations began unfolding of sex among residents and doctors in the psychiatry department at UCLA's medical school that rivals anything in those hospital procedurals. The allegations are part of an unusual sexual harassment lawsuit filed by a male resident against UCLA and a woman who was one of his supervising physicians.

The state's third-largest health plan, Blue Shield of California, will no longer send patients to UCLA Medical Center, one of the nation's top-ranked facilities, because the hospital wants too much money for its services, the insurer said Wednesday. The hospital, with campuses in Westwood and Santa Monica and more than 1,000 beds, has been part of Blue Shield of California's network for two decades. But months of negotiations about payment broke down Tuesday, both sides said.