Act Two

The new LAC+USC Medical Center Replacement Facility takes shape, nearly ready for its role as the health services sanctuary for Los Angeles County.

by Jon Nalick

For 72 years, General Hospital served as Los Angeles County’s lifeline for health and emergency services, but a new $820 million structure now rising alongside it stands poised to take over that crucial role for the decades ahead.

Officials for Los Angeles County and the Keck School of Medicine of USC say they envision the new LAC+USC Medical Center Replacement Facility as a vastly more efficient provider of health services than General Hospital and also as a showcase of private-public cooperation in service to the community.

Pete Delgado, chief executive officer of the LAC+USC Healthcare Network, describes the facility as “a great gift” to the people of Los Angeles County.

“The project allows us to offer all the advantages of a new, state-of-the-art facility combined with the expertise and experience of a world-class medical school,” Delgado says.

The importance of the project to the community is difficult to overestimate, Delgado explains. The LAC+USC Medical Center—of which the Replacement Facility will serve as the focal point for all services—is the largest provider of trauma services in Los Angeles County. Also, it is one of only two burn centers in the county and houses a level II neonatal intensive care unit. More than 1,500 medical professionals, including medical residents, nursing and other health-care providers, train at LAC+USC Medical Center.

“It’s hard to imagine a more important institution to the long-term health of the community. It provides a great service,” he says.

Brian Henderson, M.D., dean of the Keck School of Medicine, says he views the Replacement Facility as an impressive advance in medical care, but notes that the facility itself is only part of the equation. The real value of the project stems from the extensive collaboration between the Keck School and Los Angeles County.

“We will be able to achieve far more with our combined resources than either institution could achieve separately. This is a partnership that benefits everyone—from the physicians we train, to the patients we treat, to the community at large.”

Described as the largest capital construction project undertaken by the County of Los Angeles, the 600-bed, 1.5 million-square-foot Replacement Facility will include a seven-story outpatient building, an eight-story inpatient tower, a five-story diagnostic and treatment building and a central energy plant.

Construction of the glass-and-steel structure remains on time and on budget and is slated to open in 2007.

Project director Brad Bolger says the new facility’s design incorporates faster and more efficient elevators, including one that provides a dedicated link between a helipad and the emergency room to ensure the fastest possible transfer of critical patients. Currently at General Hospital, patients transported by helicopter land 500 yards away from the hospital and must be transported from the helipad by ambulance.

The project also includes a subterranean network that permits automated vehicles to transport bulk goods such as linens and food parcels between buildings without human assistance—a feature that should greatly increase efficiency and reduce costs, Bolger says.

Other systems intended to streamline efforts include electronic medical records to reduce reliance on bulky, paper-based records, and a building-wide pneumatic tube system for transporting records, mail and laboratory samples.

“On the day it opens, this will be unarguably the most technologically sophisticated acute care hospital in the nation. It will go a long way to providing the kind of care that the community needs and deserves,” Bolger says.

The Replacement Facility also is designed to better resist and endure major catastrophes, including the most severe earthquakes, than virtually any other building in Los Angeles. In the event of a major regional emergency, the facility will be able to remain entirely self-sustaining for 72 hours.

Bolger says that ability stems from the facility being seismically isolated within a concrete “moat” containing a grid of rubber bearings that dampen ground movement. The system is so robust that it is expected to weather earthquakes of up to magnitude 8.3 without any disruption in service—even surgeries in progress could continue.

“Following a maximum credible earthquake, LAC+USC Medical Center will be one of the few hospitals capable of providing trauma care to the residents of Los Angeles County,” he says.

Jeffry Huffman, M.D., president and chief executive office of USC Care and Keck School professor of urology, says that the project will be “a major asset to USC’s Health Sciences Campus and to our training and student education programs.”

With ready access to a technologically advanced facility with state-of-the-art equipment and a diverse patient population, the Keck School’s training programs should see significant advantages in recruiting and retaining new students and faculty, Huffman says.

Another advantage afforded by the new facility’s labor-saving amenities is that physicians should be able to spend more time with patients, Huffman says, improving not only the training of physicians, but the care of patients.

Huffman says that Keck School and Los Angeles County officials have been meeting regularly to discuss the transition into the new facility.

“The project was originally planned 10 years ago, and it’s extremely difficult to plan that far in advance because the technology changes so rapidly. But there has been a high degree of coordination to ensure that we make the facility as efficient as it can be,” Huffman says. “I think that bodes well for the success of the project when the major stakeholders have remained as involved in this kind of planning as they have been.”

Delgado agrees: “I’m very pleased with the partnership we have with the Keck School of Medicine and look forward to the many successes we will share. The future is exciting and there’s a lot more that we can do together—this is only the beginning.”