County OKs Major Project for Rancho Los Amigos : Master Plan Calls for Hospital Consolidation Using Revenue From Business-Industrial Park

Every day at the sprawling, bustling complex that is Rancho Los Amigos Medical Center, a small fleet of trucks and vans delivers about 1,250 meals from the main kitchen south of Imperial Highway to satellite kitchens for patients housed north of the highway.

On Erickson Avenue, the main artery linking the medical center’s northern and southern grounds, vans zip up and down all day, delivering vials of patients’ blood and samples of tissues to the main lab, nearly one-third of a mile south of the main hospital. Electric golf carts turn the avenue into a miniature freeway, as scores of the tiny vehicles trundle workers from one side of Imperial Highway to the other.

Ferry-Like Operation

For decades, the hospital, internationally known for its ability to rehabilitate people afflicted with disabilities ranging from severe spinal injuries to nerve and brain damage, has been operating a little like a ferry terminal.

The vast facility has grown by leaps and bounds across 210 acres since it opened in 1888 as the county’s poor farm, offering ranch work to disabled people. Buildings constructed over the years as living quarters for patients have been converted to storage areas and offices, while the old chapel once used by the poor on the far south end of the grounds has fallen into disuse.

Now, after years of discussion, directors of the prestigious facility have been given the go-ahead to draw up detailed plans for a long-awaited face lift.

On Tuesday, the county Board of Supervisors approved guidelines for a master plan that includes giving the county permission to develop the southern campus into a potentially lucrative business and industrial park. In return, the county will plow its commercial revenues back into Rancho Los Amigos, helping construct new hospital buildings and treatment facilities to be consolidated on 55 acres retained for hospital use north of Imperial Highway.

‘Finally Going to Catch Up’

“This facility is finally going to catch up with our knowledge and our expertise, which are just top-notch,” said Matthew Locks, medical director of Rancho.

“The hospital has more than 200 buildings, some of them 50 years old and older,” Locks said. “Because of the way it is laid out, the operation of this hospital has been extremely costly and extremely inefficient in terms of how we must use it.”

The master plan will unfold over the next 10 or 15 years. Many details, including construction timetables and exact locations of new buildings, have not been worked out.

“We’re going to consolidate the hospital in one area,” Locks said, “and that is going to give us the benefits of all the technology we have here--but this time at our fingertips.”

For instance, Locks said, research facilities will be near lab facilities, allowing both staffs to share equipment, ideas and discoveries.

Semiprivate Rooms Planned

The hospital will be expanded to include a sleek new facility for semiprivate hospital beds that will be on par with modern private hospitals in Los Angeles. Currently, the hospital offers some semiprivate rooms, “but not enough for the demand,” Locks said.

In addition, the plan includes a modern warehouse. The hospital has no major warehouse and has been forced to stack supplies and equipment in dozens of small and medium-sized buildings all across the complex--”wherever we can find a space,” he said.

During the modernization and commercial development, a key goal of the hospital is that care for its 450 patients not be disrupted, said Edward Renford, associate executive director.

Hospital officials said they hope the only interruption will be the actual move of patients into new buildings. They plan to transfer patients in phases as each building is completed.

Entire Staff to Be Involved

“The relocation of these services without disruption in care is going to be quite a job, and it’s going to take a long time,” Renford said. “That’s why we’ve decided that everybody’s going to be involved in choosing the best way to do it--doctors, nurses, all the departments.”

One delicate move will include the transfer to the north campus of a special ward that provides lifelong care for comatose and near-comatose patients, including many young victims of brain damage from motorcycle and car accidents.

But no patients will be moved in the first few years, Renford said. The first phase includes commercial development of an empty part of the southern sector and will not affect the hospital, he said.

In that phase, the county will build a new courthouse on eight acres of land next to the existing county library headquarters south of Imperial Highway.

Nearby, the county will build a business park complex at Rives Avenue and Imperial Highway on 9.6 acres that is now used as a wheelchair race course. Another race course will be built.

County Expects Big Revenues

The county has an exclusive negotiating agreement with The Lusk Co. to design the business park, which will include a 50,000-square-foot office building, a 7,000-square-foot restaurant and light manufacturing and warehouse facilities.

Supervisor Pete Schabarum, whose district includes Rancho Los Amigos, said the two developments could earn the county revenues of up to $200 million over the 66-year terms of the leases. Tom Hibbard, a spokesman for Schabarum, said the county plans to set up a special fund for Rancho Los Amigos into which those revenues would be paid.

“Rancho Los Amigos is the finest rehabilitation hospital in the world, and the overall thrust of our plan has just one purpose: to generate the future of that facility, to maintain its preeminence in the field,” Hibbard said Tuesday. “To do that, we’ll be generating a stream of income from the business park.”

The county will retain ownership of the land, earning revenues from lease fees, county officials said.

Renford said that the hospital land south of the highway was viewed as more economically realistic for a business park than the northern area because much of it is already vacant, and most of the oldest hospital buildings are there.

Next to Residential Area

In addition, hospital and county officials say they wanted the northern campus for the hospital because that area has been the hub of the medical center for many years, and the residential neighborhoods adjacent to it are more accustomed to living near a hospital than a business park.

After the two initial commercial developments are in place, sometime in the next few years, the hospital’s first major phase probably will be constructed, Renford said.

That phase will include a wing of semiprivate rooms, allowing the hospital to serve more paying patients who are expected to choose Rancho Los Amigos instead of private hospitals in Los Angeles County. Today, most of Rancho’s patients are supported by government insurance like Medicare, but the facility also accepts private patients requiring special care who are referred by other hospitals.

Although the new wing will serve the hospital’s existing clientele, Locks said it will also attract patients who would choose “Rancho because of our quality of care but do not accept our current level of amenities. . . . This is something we feel will be very popular with patients.”

Renford said the semiprivate facility “will be a real carrot for Rancho.”

Expanded Outpatient Care

Another major plus for the hospital will be the enlarging of therapy areas for patients undergoing rehabilitation and an expanded outpatient care program for people adapting to life after receiving treatment for spinal injuries.

The hospital’s work on spinal cord injury, including the development of a surgical technique to implant stimulators that restore limb motion in paralyzed patients, has earned Rancho recognition from the federal government.

Locks said that because many people who are disabled by spinal injuries live a normal life span, there is a great need for therapy programs that help them get along at home and in the workplace once their medical care has been completed.

“The whole idea is to maintain our edge in our care for these kinds of people, and that’s just what this master plan is going to do,” Locks said. “The doctors, the therapists, everyone is simply thrilled.”