Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center - Ucla Hospital

The Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center (also commonly referred to as UCLA Medical Center or "the Reagan") is a hospital located on the campus of the University of California, Los Angeles in Westwood, Los Angeles, California, United States. It is currently ranked the 5th best hospital in the United States by US News and World Report.

UCLA Medical Center has research centers covering nearly all major specialties of medicine and nursing as well as dentistry and is the primary teaching hospital for the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and the UCLA School of Nursing. The hospital's emergency department is certified as a level I trauma center for adults and pediatrics. Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center is a constituent part of the UCLA Health System, a comprehensive consortium of research hospitals and medical institutes affiliated with UCLA, including:

• Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center
• UCLA Medical Center, Santa Monica
• Resnick Neuropsychiatric Hospital at UCLA
• Mattel Children's Hospital UCLA
• UCLA Medical Group, with its wide-reaching system of primary-care and specialty-care offices throughout the greater Los Angeles region.

Collectively, the hospitals and specialty-care facilities of the UCLA Health System make it among the most comprehensive and advanced healthcare systems in the world. It is rated as one of the top five hospitals in the United States and is the top hospital on the West Coast according to US News & World Report. The hospital has been ranked in the top twenty in 15 of the 16 medical specialties ranked by the US News ranking. Ten of those specialties were ranked in the top ten. In 2005, the American Nurses Credentialing Center granted the medical center "Magnet" status.

Architecture

On June 29, 2008, the new Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center opened and became fully operational, replacing the older facilities across the street. The older hospital complex had suffered moderate interior structural damage in the 1994 Northridge earthquake. Because numerous hospitals in the area were severely damaged during the Northridge earthquake and injured people had to be transported long distances for emergency care, the state of California passed SB1953, an amendment to an older law requiring all hospitals to move their acute care and intensive care units into earthquake-resistant buildings by 2008.

Originally budgeted at $598 million in 1998, construction began in 1999 and was completed in 2004. Cost overruns and construction delays attributed to rising construction costs and design changes due to medical advances resulted in the price of the building increasing to $829 million. Equipment purchased for the new building increased the total cost to over $1 billion. The Federal Emergency Management Agency contributed $432 million in earthquake relief funds to the project, and the state of California contributed $44 million. Private donations raised over $300 million for the project, including $150 million in President Reagan's name. The new building was constructed to withstand an 8.0 magnitude earthquake, one of the first buildings in California built to the most recent seismic standards.

The new 1,050,000-square-foot (98,000 m²) hospital is named after the late President of the United States and Governor of California Ronald Reagan (1911-2004). It was designed by C.C. "Didi" Pei of Pei Partnership Architects in collaboration with his father, renowned Pritzker Prize-winning architect I.M. Pei, and has been claimed to be the most technologically advanced hospital in the world. The hospital will contain fewer patient beds (525) than the one it replaces. Patient beds in the intensive-care units will be accessible to nurses and physicians from 360 degrees, and surgical floor plans will be modular, allowing them to be expanded and reconfigured as medical technology evolves. The hospital is sheathed with mechanically honed, cream colored, horizontally grained travertine marble panels sold at below-market-rate cost by Primo Marrioti, the owner of an Italian quarry whose cancer was cured at UCLA. The travertine elements were fastened to a sophisticated interloc king panelized aluminum cladding system developed by Benson Industries of Portland, Oregon. The building envelope is designed to resist and survive severe seismic events and maintain excellent resistance to air and water infiltration.

The older center itself is a sprawling 11-story brick building designed by Welton Becket. It is considered a landmark of early modern architecture. The center was built in several phases, the first of which was completed in 1953. The hospital has a "tic-tac-toe" layout of intersecting wings, creating a series of courtyards throughout the complex. The first floor is unusual in that most of its walls are completely clad in a thick layer of naturally-weathered, unfilled, travertine, creating an unusual "organic" appearance. The exterior architecture is very simple (as with many Becket designs), consisting of a red brick wall with horizontal bands of stainless-steel louvers over the windows to keep direct sunlight from heating the building.

Some of the old complex will be torn down, and some of it will be renovated and turned into office space when it is no longer an operational hospital. The law does not require that all parts of a hospital be made earthquake-safe, only the most important parts. Much of the extensive travertine wall cladding from the building's interior will most likely be salvaged and re-used.

Area covered for the paramedics

Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center has covered paramedic areas for the Fire Department.

• Beverly Hills F.D. - RA 1, 2 and 3
• Los Angeles Fire Department - RA 5, 19, 34, 37, 43, 58, 59, 63, 92, 94 and 95.
• Los Angeles County Fire Department - Squads 71, 88, 89 and 172.

Mattel Children's Hospital UCLA

The Mattel Children's Hospital UCLA is located on the west wing of the newly constructed Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center "to provide treatment for children in a compassionate atmosphere, and, as a teaching hospital, to conduct research that improves the understanding and treatment of pediatric diseases," as stated in its mission statement.

It was founded in 1950 as the UCLA Department of Pediatrics and was located in the Marion Davies wing of the old UCLA Medical Center starting in 1962 until moving into the new hospital in 2008. The hospital became a member of the National Association of Children's Hospitals and Related Institutions. The name of "Mattel Children's Hospital UCLA" was given to the hospital to honor the donations from Mattel, Inc.

Resnick Neuropsychiatric Hospital at UCLA

The Stewart & Lynda Resnick Neuropsychiatric Hospital at UCLA is a 74-bed acute care psychiatric hospital located within the Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center. Following a donation, the hospital was named for Lynda Resnick and her husband. The hospital has a pediatrics unit, adolescent unit, an adult unit, and a geriatrics unit.

UCLA Daltrey/Townshend Teen & Young Adult Cancer Program

The UCLA Daltrey/Townshend Teen & Young Adult Cancer Program is a center to serve teens and young adult cancer patients at the Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center. The program provides a comfortable, youth-oriented environment where teens and young adults can supply emotional support for one another during treatment. The units are designed to provide the feeling of a normal life, assisting young patients in dealing with difficult diagnoses and long stays in the Medical Center.

The center was made possible through the work of Roger Daltrey and Pete Townshend of the rock band The Who. The opening on November 4, 2011, was attended by Daltrey, and also musicians Robert Plant and Dave Grohl. The musicians presented an autographed guitar to be hung on the walls of the center, and the program launch was followed by a fund-raising event on November 5.

Nobel Prize in Medicine

UCLA faculty member and pharmacologist Louis Ignarro's discovery of one of the most important signaling molecules in the human body, nitric oxide, led to his winning the Nobel Prize in medicine in 1998. This discovery revolutionized the fields of cardiopulmonary medicine and immunology.

Notable physicians

• David Ho
• Louis Ignarro
• Patrick Soon-Shiong

Notable Patients

• Carrie Fisher
• Michael Jackson
• John Wooden
• Kanye West

Mo cell line controversy

UCLA Medical Center is well known as the defendant in a famous Supreme Court of California case, Moore v. Regents of the University of California, 51 Cal. 3d 120 (1990). The court decided that patient John Moore had no property rights in the immensely profitable "Mo" cell line which UCLA researchers had discovered when they removed his cancerous spleen.

CRE outbreak

Seven people have been infected by and two have died from carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae, a drug-resistant superbug. A total of 179 people were exposed to the bacteria via two duodenoscopes which were not disinfected sufficiently. The outbreak is not serious, however, as the superbug is not a serious threat to healthy patients, and cannot be transmitted easily through its own means. The risk of infection via duodenoscope is very low as well, with procedures being performed on over 500,000 individuals between 2013 and 2014, and only 135 cases of CRE being reported as a result. Some doctors believe several more outbreaks of this nature are imminent. Since the outbreak, demands have been made to the FDA to improve their regulation and sanitation of medical devices.