Olive View Medical Center Seeks Tighter Security : Health: A proposal includes a $100,000 request for an annex with a metal detector, once rejected by supervisors.

Although Olive View Medical Center in Sylmar appears to be the safest of four county hospitals with emergency rooms, administrators are proposing to dramatically bolster security there in the wake of this week’s shooting at County-USC Medical Center.

The six county employees and patients assaulted at Olive View last year were fewer than those attacked at any of the three other county hospitals, Olive View administrators said, although they could not provide comparison numbers. The county Department of Health Services is compiling crime statistics for all its facilities, but the results were not available Friday, a spokeswoman said.

Despite the relatively low incidence of assaults at Olive View, administrators there immediately added more armed guards in the wake of the shooting of three doctors by a disgruntled patient at County-USC Medical Center. They also prepared a laundry list of security needs, including a $100,000 proposal that the Board of Supervisors previously rejected for an emergency room annex equipped with a metal detector.

“We may be the Rolls-Royce of county hospitals,” said Maple Gray, Olive View’s assistant administrator in charge of outpatient services. “But the shooting has got everyone afraid, and it’s better to be safe than sorry.”

But with the county facing a budget shortfall in the coming year that may approach $1 billion, Olive View will have to compete for limited funds with the other three county hospitals that have emergency rooms--Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center in Watts, Harbor/UCLA Medical Center in Torrance and the USC center.

“We’re going to try to do what we can at each hospital, but with limited bucks, we may have to put the money where we have the greatest need,” said Supervisor Ed Edelman, whose district includes most of the San Fernando Valley.

Gray attributed Olive View’s low crime rate to the fact that, with about 200 daily emergency room visits, it is not as busy as the other three hospitals, Gray said. At County-USC, 700 people a day visit the hospital’s three emergency rooms. Also, unlike those facilities, Olive View is located in a remote suburb and is not a trauma center, so paramedics do not transport victims of violent crimes there, Gray said.

But emergency room patients at Olive View “are getting more and more aggressive,” warned Dr. Vena Ricketts, acting chief of emergency room services, and a 13-year veteran of Olive View. “There’s no question that what occurred at Med Center could happen here.”

Many of Olive View’s outpatient clients are uninsured and turn to the hospital’s emergency room as a last resort, leading to overcrowding, Ricketts said. Waits of three to six hours are not unusual, Gray said.

In the waiting room of the hospital’s emergency room, triage nurses sit behind plexiglass shields installed in 1988 to reduce the transmission of disease and protect employees from being assaulted, Gray said. But there are no locks or buzzer systems on doors leading to treatment rooms or the ambulance bay, a deficiency hospital officials want corrected, she said.

Lt. Patrick Soll, who is in charge of the county’s Office of Security Management, toured Olive View and the other county hospitals this week to assess their security needs. He said he will recommend that a trailer equipped with a metal detector be installed blocking the entrance to Olive View’s emergency room. Patients would be screened there before being allowed inside for treatment. He also said some corridors in the hospital should be sealed off from the public with card-access-only systems.

But emergency room patients interviewed this week said that instead of bolstering security, Olive View should add more medical staff to reduce the waiting time.

“I know how that guy feels who shot those doctors,” said Phyllis Anderson, 47, an unemployed, uninsured teacher who said she had been waiting five hours with a torn knee ligament. “My blood pressure has tripled since I’ve been here.”

“To prevent violence, there should be faster care,” said Abu Selim, 38, a Pacoima collections agent whose uninsured mother had been waiting four hours with chest pains.

But limited funds make it impossible to keep up with the increasing demand for emergency room services, Gray said. “It’s not our druthers, but the reality is it’s less expensive to beef up security at this point.”