UCLA Faculty Association: Another UCLA Health "Satellite"

Thursday, August 4, 2022

Another UCLA Health "Satellite"

Existing closed Olympia Medical Center

Blog readers may recall the recent Regents' discussions about expanding enrollments and creation of "satellite" campuses of space-constrained home campuses such as UCLA.* At one point Regent Leib - the Board chair - remarked that the UC health care enterprises already have satellites. (For example, UCLA took over Santa Monica Hospital.)

Yours truly happened to spot an advertisement in the LA Business Journal (see below) dealing with bidding on the contract to construct the "UCLA Neuropsychiatric Replacement Hospital" to be located at 5900 W. Olympic Boulevard in LA.

Click on image to enlarge.

UCLA acquired the Olympia Medical Center, which was closing, in early 2021. (A medical office building across the street was also acquired.) At the time, there were concerns about the closure due to the pandemic, loss of an emergency room in the area, layoffs of staff, etc.** But the facility was nonetheless closed.

The Regents approved the acquisition and conversion of the facility in September 2021.***

According to the Regents' document, the current psychiatric beds in Westwood would be moved to the new facility and additional beds would be added. The Westwood beds would then be repurposed for other medical use.

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*http://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/2022/07/satellite-uc-campuses.html; http://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/2022/07/watch-regents-meetings-of-july-21-2022.html.

**https://dailybruin.com/2021/01/30/ems-agency-passes-motion-in-support-of-suspending-ucla-owned-medical-center-closure; https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/finance/los-angeles-hospital-closing-after-74-years.html.

***https://regents.universityofcalifornia.edu/regmeet/sept21/f2a.pdf. The item appeared on the consent agenda of the Regents' Finance and Capital Strategies committee and so was approved without discussion. See the beginning of https://archive.org/details/regents-academic-and-student-affairs-9-29-21/Regents-Finance+and+Capital+Strategies+9-29-21.mp4.