The Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center has finally opened its doors to patient care following the successful transfer of nearly 350 patients from the old UCLA Medical Center into the new structure.
“Everything went exactly according to plan,” said Dr. James Atkinson, senior medical director of clinical operations at the new medical center. “The new hospital is now fully operational with all 38 emergency rooms open as well as the trauma centers.”
About an hour after the move was complete, Atkinson reported that there were already one liver transplant, one kidney transplant and an appendectomy underway in the new hospital.
The entire move was completed by noon Sunday and went on without the use of any emergency plans or procedures, said Dr. Edward McCabe, whose job during the move was to assess and attend to any problems that came up.
“One of my patients, a young boy, actually slept through the whole move-in process,” said McCabe, the physician-in-chief at the Mattel Children’s Hospital at UCLA. “He woke up in the new hospital and couldn’t believe the view he saw when he looked up from his bed.”
The design and structure of the new medical center, full of natural light and space, is one of the main features that sets this hospital apart from others, said Dr. Gerald Levey, dean of the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. “It begins a new era at UCLA and completes a 14-year-long odyssey.”
The UCLA Medical Center, Mattel Children’s Hospital and the Resnick Neuropsychiatric Hospital at UCLA are all self-contained in the new structure and are now fully operational and accepting patients.
“Everyone had their own little part to play,” Levey said. “The entire team knew exactly what they had to do in their specific area.”
But, it was only through collaborative efforts involving the staff, patients, families and physicians that the medical center will soon be the best in the country, said Dr. David Feinberg, chief executive of the UCLA Hospital System.
A team of 500 people was used just to design the intensive care units, Feinberg said.
There are 520 beds in the hospital, all of which provide 360-degree access for physicians. The rooms are all single occupancy, with the ability to become intensive care units in case of an emergency, he added.
The 1-million-square-foot building, which would take a person approximately nine days to walk through every door, was designed by C.C. “Didi” Pei and his firm, Pei Partnership of New York, with guidance from Pei’s father, architect I.M. Pei. The new medical center replaces the 53-year-old center that was heavily damaged in the 1994 Northridge earthquake.
“The new medical center is seismically the safest place to be in L.A.,” Levey said. It can withstand an earthquake with magnitude 8.0 on the Richter scale, he added.
The new center is not only structurally sound, but it was also designed to put patients in an environment of healing, Feinberg said. He added that this environment is achieved with the use of natural light as well as by giving patients a sense of control during their stay.
However, the road to creating this up-to-date and technologically advanced hospital was not easy and was marked by multiple delays.
Some delays were caused by the rising costs of construction while building the new medical center, which is the largest building ever constructed by the UC system, officials said.
The cost of the new center reached $1 billion, which was funded by federal, state and private sources. A donation of $150 million was given in the name of late President Ronald Reagan for the construction of the new center.
Most of the delays occurred because of the dynamic nature of the project, Feinberg said.
“We wanted a state-of-the-art hospital,” Feinberg said. “During construction, new technologies came into being, and we would go in and replace what was already built in order to implement the best technology.”
One of the more recent setbacks, which put the move-in day in June instead of in May, occurred when a coffee machine on the eighth floor started to leak and ruined about 30 rooms, Feinberg said.
This was a minor setback according to Levey, and he said it gave the team even more time to perfect the transfer plans that have been in progress for six years.
With the project finished, the team expressed a sense of great satisfaction and felt it has left behind a great legacy with the construction and opening of the Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center.
The old medical center will continue to function as home of the School of Medicine as well as all other research-related activities. Levey said the next project underway is updating the old medical center and bringing it up to date with current seismic building standards.
With the new medical center up and running, the entire team is ready to face future challenges, Levey said.