You may have seen the headline in the LA Times yesterday about an LA-area hospital closing in the midst of a pandemic with other hospitals overloaded. It starts out:
When healthcare workers at Olympia Medical Center reported for work on New Year’s Eve, they were prepared for another grueling day of patient care amid L.A.’s worsening COVID-19 surge. What they weren’t prepared for was the laminated paper taped to the front door. “Olympia Medical Center has elected to voluntarily suspend all patient care services, including the emergency department and all emergency medical services, as of 11:59 p.m. on March 31, 2021,” the notice said...
Unless you kept reading well into the story, you may have missed the UCLA connection:
The owner of Olympia Medical Center, Alecto Healthcare, sold the facility to UCLA Health in recent weeks. In a statement to The Times, UCLA Health confirmed the purchase and said it is planning a “major facility renovation on the former Olympia campus” this year.
“UCLA Health regularly considers property purchases and growth opportunities in the region that allow us to expand access to care for patients who need our services,” the statement said. “One such opportunity arose recently with Olympia Medical Center of Los Angeles in mid-Wilshire.”
David Sampson, a spokesman for UCLA Health, provided no further details about the purchase or about when the facility will reopen. He declined to say whether the facility will remain a hospital...
It seems to yours truly that some adult supervision is going to be needed here. (Chancellor Block?) True, the closing comes at the end of March, and perhaps the situation will be less dire by then. But can UCLA at this moment be part of a hospital closing plan that seemingly goes forward regardless of what the situation will be in late March?
The news article on the hospital closing is at https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-01-08/covid-19-surge-la-hospital-set-to-close
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