Star Treatment : Celebrities in Hospital Often Want More Than Medicine

St. John’s is hot.

With superstar Elizabeth Taylor in one of its 550 beds and Michael Jackson only recently released, the Santa Monica health center appears to be this month’s celebrity hospital of choice, rivaling such other hospitals to the stars as Cedars-Sinai Medical Center and UCLA. Former President Ronald Reagan also had tests performed at St. John’s on Wednesday but did not spend the night.

Because so many of the rich and celebrated live here, upscale convalescence is as much a fact of Los Angeles life as face lifts and his and hers Rollses, local hospital administrators say.

So, not surprisingly, a number of Westside hospitals are geared up to meet the special needs of the sick and famous. Offering the celebrity infirm luxurious suites, gourmet food and hospital staffs savvy about confidentiality, these hospitals find there is money and prestige--as well as considerable inconvenience--in serving a celebrity clientele.

“It’s very clear that in this part of Southern California there is a clientele that expects and wants these kinds of amenities,” said Mark Laret, associate director of marketing and planning for UCLA Medical Center.

And hospitals welcome this kind of clientele.

“The fact that they choose St. John’s and say good things about it sends a message,” said Dr. Robert Fredricks, senior vice president for medical affairs at St. John’s Hospital and Health Center. “It enhances our reputation.” Celebrities also help the hospital raise money, both by giving gifts themselves and lending their names to fund-raising activities.

Local hospitals with luxury accommodations insist that all patients get the same high level of health care. The pampered patients merely help underwrite the cost of caring for the less privileged, the administrators say.

For the most part, ailing celebrities go to hospitals their doctors recommend, usually ones they are affiliated with. Many wealthy, well-known people live on the Westside, as do their physicians. They tend to go to nearby hospitals. St. John’s is relatively close to Malibu and has a clinic in Beverly Hills.

Although celebrity patients can enhance an institution’s prestige, Fredricks said he knew of no cases in which hospitals sought out doctors with famous patients. Physicians’ applications for staff privileges are evaluated strictly on the credentials of the doctor, he said.

But the large pool of prominent and wealthy patients does affect the services local hospitals offer. Some rooms in Westside hospitals look more like accommodations in a four-star hotel than the sterile sick rooms of tradition.

Both Taylor and Jackson, for example, were housed in two of four large suites on the fourth floor of St. John’s--”4 South,” the staff calls it. (Taylor is expected to remain for another week or two.)

St. John’s, opened in 1942, had no VIP rooms until 1988 when it created four luxury suites by combining standard-sized rooms. A regular private room at St. John’s costs $550 a day. The tab for more conspicuous convalescence: $1,700 a day, and that’s before the doctor’s bill.

The upgraded rooms have VCRs and wet bars as well as sofa beds for overnight guests. There are soothing oil paintings of flowers on the walls, and the TV in the living area, which can be separated from the sick bed by a sliding door, is hidden away in an armoire.

Virginia Zamboni, a spokeswoman for St. John’s, said the hospital invested in the remodeling job “because we had so many requests from people for more space.” According to Fredricks, the VIP area not only appeals to well-heeled patients, it makes it easier to protect their privacy and security.

Zamboni, director of community affairs and vice president of the St. John’s Foundation, said the hospital has always had its share of celebrity patients, largely because of the reputation of its medical and nursing staff. The late Ava Gardner used to fly in from London for medical care, Zamboni said.

The VIP rooms are far from opulent, she pointed out. St. John’s has no chef for its VIP patients, unlike Century City Hospital, where the chef will whip up anything from osso buco--braised veal shanks, Italian style--to Grand Marnier torte, if the doctor approves. At St. John’s the celebrity patient eats what everyone else eats unless the food is brought in.

“We’re not like UCLA with a special wing and lobster,” said Zamboni, referring to UCLA’s VIP service in its Wilson Pavilion.

UCLA has set aside the ninth and 10th floors of its Westwood hospital for patients willing to pay a premium for amenities. Suites there cost up to $1,095 a day. Cedars-Sinai has extra large, deluxe rooms on its eighth floor (all its rooms are private) for $1,161.

Century City Hospital, in many respects resembling a fine hotel with bedpans, has six luxury suites in what it calls the Century Pavilion. There, suites cost $1,450 a day, oxygen tanks are hidden behind hand-painted Japanese screens and there is a reproduction Queen Anne desk in the nurse’s station.

The Pavilion also offers personal wine racks, Limoges china, gold-plated bathroom fixtures and a patient liaison who will find tickets to “Phantom of the Opera” for a patient’s guest.

The Pavilion is unusual in that it has advertised its concierge-like service. Most hospitals depend on word of mouth.

Privacy is the one thing celebrity patients want almost as much as bed rest, hospital staff say. All local hospitals that cater to them have strategies for protecting their privacy. Many celebrities check in during the evening or on weekends. Instead of answering questions at the admissions desk in the lobby, they are often admitted on their floor or in an administrator’s office. They often use aliases. St. John’s would not confirm or deny that Taylor checked in as “Beth Warner” or that Jackson called himself “Bill Bray.”

Hospital personnel work closely with a star’s publicist and staff to determine how much information about the celebrity’s condition will be released to the press. To keep fans, reporters and other potential interlopers at bay the hospitals depend on their security staffs (St. John’s has a staff of 20), augmented by the star’s own personnel.

If a patient wants a guard outside the room, it’s strictly “B.Y.O.B., or Bring Your Own Bodyguard,” Zamboni said. In April, Elizabeth Taylor’s security people stopped a reporter and photographer, apparently from a tabloid, who, disguised as nuns, managed to get past hospital guards.

Fredricks said that all new employees at St. John’s sign a statement saying they understand that confidentiality is the legal and moral right of every patient and that they could lose their job for violating it. Confidentiality is also emphasized regularly at medical staff meetings, he said.

But Paulette Weir, St. John’s director of public relations, said hospital employees are constantly being badgered by the sleazier elements of the press. She said she had been offered bribes on several occasions. When a leak does occur, administrators can’t help suspecting their own staff. “I begin looking around at my people and wondering, ‘Are you wearing a new Rolex?’ ” a Century City Pavilion administrator said.

The day after Michael Jackson checked in last week, the public relations office at St. John’s fielded 400 phone calls. But nobody is complaining. In the highly competitive world of health care, celebrity endorsements are worth their weight in inconvenience.

“We don’t ask Michael Jackson why he came here and not someplace else,” Weir said. “We’re just glad he came.”

Times staff writer Ron Smith contributed to this story.