Los Angeles County+USC Medical Center

Los Angeles County+USC Medical Center
Los Angeles County Department of Health Services
Geography
Location	Los Angeles, Los Angeles County, California, United States
Coordinates	34°03′34″N 118°12′30″W / 34.05939°N 118.20847°W / 34.05939; -118.20847Coordinates: 34°03′34″N 118°12′30″W / 34.05939°N 118.20847°W / 34.05939; -118.20847
Organization
Care system	Public hospital
Hospital type	Teaching
Affiliated university	University of Southern California
Services
Emergency department	Level I trauma center
Beds	600
History
Founded	1878
Links
Website	http://www.lacusc.org/
Lists	Hospitals in California

Los Angeles County+USC Medical Center, also known as County/USC, by the abbreviation LAC+USC, or by the name Los Angeles County General, is a 600-bed public teaching hospital located in the Boyle Heights neighborhood of Los Angeles, California. It is jointly operated by Los Angeles County and the University of Southern California.

Operations

Los Angeles County+USC Medical Center is one of the largest public hospitals and medical training centers in the United States, and the largest single provider of healthcare in Los Angeles County. It provides healthcare services for the region's medically underserved, is a Level I trauma center and treats over 28 percent of the region's trauma victims (2005). It provides care for half of all AIDS and sickle-cell anemia patients in Southern California. LAC+USC Medical Center is owned and operated by the County of Los Angeles.

Although by law the emergency room must accept all patients regardless of ability to pay, hospital care is not free. LAC+USC accepts self-pay patients as well as patients covered by private insurance, Medicare, and Medicaid (Medi-Cal).

The LAC+USC Medical Center provides a full spectrum of emergency, inpatient and outpatient services. These include medical, surgical, emergency/trauma, obstetrical, gynecological and pediatric services as well as psychiatric services for adults, adolescents and children. Some LAC+USC doctors are faculty of the Keck School of Medicine of USC; care is also provided by more than 1,000 medical residents.^[1]

LAC+USC is one of the busiest public hospitals in the Western United States, with nearly 39,000 inpatients discharged, and one million ambulatory care patient visits each year. The Emergency Department is one of the world's busiest, with more than 150,000 visits per year.^[2] LAC+USC operates one of only three burn centers in Los Angeles County and one of the few Level III Neonatal Intensive Care Units in Southern California. LAC+USC is also the home of the Los Angeles County College of Nursing and Allied Health, which has prepared registered nurses for professional practice since its founding in 1895.^[3]

New facility

Front entrance of the historic building.

On November 8, 2008, transfer of all inpatients from Women's and Children's Hospital and the historic white 800-bed hospital on the hill to a new, $1 billion, state-of-the-art 600-bed replacement hospital just south of it was completed, and the new hospital was fully opened for service. The new hospital consists of three linked buildings: a clinic tower, a diagnostic and treatment tower, and an inpatient tower. It was built because the old building did not meet new earthquake and fire codes enacted in the aftermath of the 1994 Northridge earthquake. The old building remains open for offices and support services only. The new facility has a larger number of intensive care beds to handle patients in the aftermath of disasters.

Street front view of the outpatient clinic of the new hospital, opened November 2008.

History

The Los Angeles County Hospital and the University of Southern California Medical School were first affiliated in 1885, five years after USC was founded. The present-day LAC+USC complex is adjacent to the University of Southern California Health Sciences Campus, which includes the USC Keck School of Medicine, USC School of Pharmacy, USC University Hospital and the USC Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center and Hospital.

LAC+USC's three-year cardiology fellowship program was on probation because of "insufficient teaching time by the faculty"; training and teaching plans are being reformed.^[4] The cardiology fellowship has been reaccredited and is again matriculating fellows. New staff have been hired and the issues cited relating to teaching have been resolved.

Film and television appearances

View of Downtown Los Angeles from the top of the hospital's parking structure

The portion of the LAC+USC Medical Center seen as the exterior during the closing credits of General Hospital from 1975 until 1993.

Marilyn Monroe was born in the charity ward of this hospital on June 1, 1926. The hospital also has a jail ward. In 1954, Stan Getz was processed in the jail ward as his wife gave birth to their third child one floor below. He had been arrested for attempting to rob a pharmacy to get a morphine fix.

The distinct Art Deco-style main building served as the exterior of the hospital in the 1998 movie City of Angels. In Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, the episode entitled "The Good Wound", exterior shots of the older LAC+USC facility to represent the hospital where Riley was being held. The outside of the hospital appeared in the television series Dr. Kildare, where it was known as "Blair General Hospital". There were a number of scenes filmed in one of the hospital's larger operating theaters in the TV series Ben Casey. The hospital also appears in the movie El Norte. The stairs and front entrance of the original LAC+USC Medical Center is seen in a scene in the 1993 film Blood In, Blood Out when one of the main characters is released after being treated for gunshot wounds. The exterior is also used in shots portraying Jessica Alba's hospital stay in the 2008 horror movie The Eye.

Beginning in 1975, the ABC soap opera General Hospital began using the facility for its exterior shots, appearing primarily in the show's opening sequence, where it still remains. The lower floors of the show's Los Angeles studio are modeled after the actual hospital's emergency room entrance, allowing for the show to shoot outdoor scenes in their own parking lot. On their spin-off, General Hospital: Night Shift, the upper floors were edited in digitally to fit on top of the show's studio, creating a CGI look, modeled after the real hospital's original exterior.

The government agent in E. T. came from here

See also

• Knocking, a documentary on Jehovah's Witnesses, featuring LAC+USC Medical Center

References

1. ^ "Los Angeles County Hospital + USC Medical Center". Keck School of Medicine. University of Southern California. 2006-02-10. http://www.usc.edu/schools/medicine/patient_care/hospitals_clinics/lacusc_medical.html. Retrieved 2008-07-11. 
2. ^ http://www.saem.org/rescat/lac.html
3. ^ http://www.ladhs.org/wps/portal/CollegeOfNursing/
4. ^ Lin, Rong-Gong (2008-07-11). "County-USC may lose its cardiology training program". Los Angeles Times. http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-usc11-2008jul11,0,4005555.story. Retrieved 2008-07-11. 

External links

• Official site at LACUSC.org
• Media related to Los Angeles County+USC Medical Center at Wikimedia Commons