Loma Linda University Medical Center (LLUMC) is an academic hospital in California's

Inland Empire The Inland Empire (IE) is a metropolitan area and region inland of and adjacent to coastal Southern California, centering around the cities of San Bernardino and Riverside, and bordering Los Angeles County to the west. It includes the citie ...

region. Opened more than 100 years ago, it has a trauma center that admits over one million patients yearly, around 900 faculty physicians and over 1,000 beds. The main tower of the center was built in 1967 and is 16 stories high. Currently, the hospital is building two new hospital towers. It is one of the tallest buildings in the Inland Empire. Because of its height and white coloration, it is possible to view the main hospital building from various locations around the San Bernardino

valley A valley is an elongated low area often running between hills or mountains, which will typically contain a river or stream running from one end to the other. Most valleys are formed by erosion of the land surface by rivers or streams ove ...

and

mountains A mountain is an elevated portion of the Earth's crust, generally with steep sides that show significant exposed bedrock. Although definitions vary, a mountain may differ from a plateau in having a limited summit area, and is usually higher th ...

. Loma Linda University Medical Center made international news on October 26, 1984, when Dr. Leonard L. Bailey transplanted a baboon heart into

Baby Fae Stephanie Fae Beauclair (October 14, 1984 – November 15, 1984), better known as Baby Fae, was an American infant born in 1984 with hypoplastic left heart syndrome. She became the first infant subject of a xenotransplant procedure and first s ...

, an infant born with a severe heart defect known as

hypoplastic left heart syndrome Hypoplastic left heart syndrome (HLHS) is a rare congenital heart defect in which the left side of the heart is severely underdeveloped and incapable of supporting the systemic circulation. It is estimated to account for 2-3% of all congenital he ...

. Baby Fae died a few weeks later; however, this effort led to the successful infant heart transplant program, with transplantation of human-to-human infant transplants. LLUMC is home to the Venom E.R., which specializes in snake bites. In 2014, LLUMC was ranked the 14th best hospital in California by the U.S. News & World Report.

Loma Linda University

Loma Linda University Medical Center is the teaching hospital for Loma Linda University, which includes schools of medicine, nursing, pharmacy, dentistry, allied health, religion, public health, and behavioral health.

Children's hospital

Loma Linda University Children's Hospital is the sole children's hospital for almost 1.3 million of California's youth (San Bernardino, Riverside, Inyo, and Mono Counties). The hospital provides comprehensive pediatric specialties and subspecialties to infants, children, teens, and young adults aged 0–21 throughout the region.

Surgical hospital

In May 2008, it was announced that LLUMC had been in talks since December and had finalized a buyout of the 28-bed California Heart and Surgical Center located approximately two miles east of the main campus on the border of Loma Linda and

Redlands, California Redlands ( ) is a city in San Bernardino County, California, United States. As of the 2020 census, the city had a population of 73,168, up from 68,747 at the 2010 census. The city is located approximately west of Palm Springs and east of ...

. This was a marked departure of their previous position of opposition to the facility when it was first proposed in 2005. The Heart and Surgical Center would have been a for-profit facility while the Loma Linda is a non-profit facility and it was feared by area hospitals, including Loma Linda, that the Heart and Surgical Center would take all the paying patients. However, Loma Linda finalized the construction and furnishing of the center and in January 2009, they received state approval to open and begin operations as Loma Linda University Heart & Surgical Hospital. The daVinci Robot that was operated at the Medical Center to perform minimally invasive robotic surgeries was moved to the Surgical Hospital. The hospital is now known as Loma Linda University Surgical Hospital, when heart operations were moved to the main medical center.

Seismic upgrade project

The main hospital building is currently undergoing a seismic upgrade project. It is being headed by

Turner Construction Company Turner Construction is an American construction company with presence in 20 countries. It is a subsidiary of the German company Hochtief. It is the largest domestic contractor in the United States as of 2020, with a revenue of $14.41 billion ...

New York, NY New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...

. The project includes reinforcing the main building to bring it up to California state standards.

Controversy

Medicare lawsuits

In 2004, Loma Linda University Behavioral Medicine Center paid 2.2 million dollars to settle a federal lawsuit that the organization had over-billed federal health insurance programs. The lawsuit alleged that its billing service had prepared two different cost reports, one for internal use and an inflated one to bill Medicare. In 2005, a group of 20 physician corporations paid to settle a federal lawsuit over fraudulent Medicare billings reviewed under the Physicians at Teaching Hospitals (PaTH) initiative. The lawsuit alleged that the hospital had been billing Medicare for procedures done by residents and interns as if they had been done by the attending physicians.

References

External links

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Proton Treatment Center

This hospital in the CA Healthcare Atlas
A project by OSHPD {{authority control Hospital buildings completed in 1905 Hospital buildings completed in 1967 Hospitals established in 1905 Hospitals in San Bernardino County, California Loma Linda, California Medical Center Teaching hospitals in California Hospitals affiliated with the Seventh-day Adventist Church 1905 establishments in California Trauma centers