Olive View–UCLA Medical Center is a

hospital A hospital is a health care institution providing patient treatment with specialized health science and auxiliary healthcare staff and medical equipment. The best-known type of hospital is the general hospital, which typically has an emergency ...

, funded by

Los Angeles County Los Angeles County, officially the County of Los Angeles, and sometimes abbreviated as L.A. County, is the List of the most populous counties in the United States, most populous county in the United States and in the U.S. state of California, ...

, located in the

Sylmar Sylmar is a suburban neighborhood in the San Fernando Valley and is the northernmost neighborhood within the City of Los Angeles. Historically known for its profusion of sylvan olive orchards, Sylmar can trace its past to the 18th century and th ...

neighborhood of

Los Angeles, California Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the List of municipalities in California, largest city in the U.S. state, state of California and the List of United States cities by population, sec ...

. It is one of the primary healthcare delivery systems in the north

San Fernando Valley The San Fernando Valley, known locally as the Valley, is an urbanized valley in Los Angeles County, California. Located to the north of the Los Angeles Basin, it contains a large portion of the City of Los Angeles, as well as unincorporated ar ...

, especially the area's large working-class population. Olive View is also the closest county hospital serving the

Antelope Valley The Antelope Valley is located in northern Los Angeles County, California, and the southeast portion of Kern County, California, and constitutes the western tip of the Mojave Desert. It is situated between the Tehachapi, Sierra Pelona, and th ...

after High Desert Hospital was converted to an urgent care clinic in 2003.

Overview

The 377-bed replacement facility built on the old Sylmar site was opened on May 8, 1987. Olive View incorporated UCLA in its name, becoming Olive View–UCLA Medical Center in 1992. In May 1997, Olive View–UCLA Medical Center became a part of ValleyCare, which maintains responsibility for the care of the medically indigent, low income, uninsured residents of the San Fernando and Santa Clarita Valleys. Olive View–UCLA Medical Center has an affiliation with the

David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA The University of California, Los Angeles School of Medicine—known as the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA (DGSOM)—is an accredited medical school located in Los Angeles, California, United States. The school was renamed in 2001 in ...

, offering residency programs in major specialty areas as well as providing an on-campus School of Nursing. It is also a rotation site for medical students at UCLA.

History

The hospital was founded on October 27, 1920, as a

tuberculosis Tuberculosis (TB) is an infectious disease usually caused by ''Mycobacterium tuberculosis'' (MTB) bacteria. Tuberculosis generally affects the lungs, but it can also affect other parts of the body. Most infections show no symptoms, in w ...

(TB) sanatorium to relieve overcrowding at County General Hospital, and when it was no longer needed for TB treatment, the facilities became an acute care hospital in 1970. In 1962, Olive View Hospital performed the first open heart surgery successfully in the San Fernando Valley, and one of the first in Southern California. The hospital was known as Olive View Hospital before it became affiliated with the University of California, Los Angeles's School of Medicine in 1970. Olive View Hospital became Olive View Medical Center, a teaching hospital and a new 888-bed hospital was dedicated in December 1970. The hospital was severely damaged six weeks after it opened during the 6.5–6.7

1971 San Fernando earthquake The 1971 San Fernando earthquake (also known as the 1971 Sylmar earthquake) occurred in the early morning of February 9 in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains in southern California. The unanticipated thrust earthquake had a magnitude of ...

(February 9, 1971), which caused the collapse of the four stairwell wings, as well as the parking structure. The first floor columns of the five-story main structure nearly failed as well, shifting the entire building 18 inches off center to the north, which nearly brought down the entire structure. The building was damaged beyond repair, and demolished by implosion on May 31, 1973. For the next sixteen years, Olive View served its patients through an interim facility at MidValley in Van Nuys. On March 9, 1975, Department of Health Services Security Officer Murray F. Olsen was killed in the line of duty on the grounds of Olive View Medical Center. Olsen observed a suspect crash his truck through the gates of the medical center and race onto the hospital grounds. Pursuing the suspect in his county patrol car, he made a vehicle stop and confronted the suspect, Steven Vyeda of

Watsonville, CA Watsonville is a city in Santa Cruz County, California, located in the Monterey Bay Area of the Central Coast of California. The population was 52,590 according to the 2020 census. Predominantly Latino and Democratic, Watsonville is a self- ...

. Responding

LAPD The Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD), officially known as the City of Los Angeles Police Department, is the municipal police department of Los Angeles, California California is a state in the Western United States, located along t ...

officers found Officer Olson deceased on the ground next to his vehicle; he had been stabbed and then shot with his own weapon. His official cause of death was "contusion of spinal cord, gunshot wound to face, multiple stab wounds" per the Coroner's report. The suspect was shot and killed by police later that day. The rebuilt Olive View–UCLA Medical Center was opened in 1987. In June 1992,

Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors (LACBOS) is the five-member governing body of Los Angeles County, California, United States. History On April 1, 1850 the citizens of Los Angeles elected a three-man Court of Sessions as their first ...

approved postgraduate physicians from Cedars-Sinai Medical Center to work at Olive View–UCLA Medical Center. Physicians can now receive training not available at Cedars-Sinai. Olive View–UCLA Medical Center in Sylmar is provided with three additional doctors at a cost to the county of $9,000 a month. The 2008 Sayre Fire caused damage to several outbuildings, and led to an evacuation of the intensive care patients from the hospital.

In popular culture

Before the 1973 demolition, the hospital served as a filming location, where it played itself in a 1973 episode of the ''

Emergency! ''Emergency!'' is an American action-adventure medical drama television series jointly produced by Mark VII Limited and Universal Television. Debuting on NBC as a midseason replacement on January 15, 1972, replacing the two short-lived situat ...

'' television show. It also served as the set for a nuclear war-damaged then-futuristic jail facility in the TV series '' Mission Impossible'' in the seventh-season episode "Two Thousand". The current facility was used in scenes for the 1987 film '' Over the Top'' starring Sylvester Stallone.

Notable staff

Selma Calmes Selma Calmes (1940, ''née'' Harrison) is an anesthesiologist and co-founder of the Anesthesia History Association. Early life Calmes was born in Corregidor, an island in Manila Bay that is legally part of Cavite City, in 1940; however, her famil ...

, co-founder of the Anesthesia History Association, former chair of the department of anesthesiology.

References

External links