Hospital Holds Drill to Test Preparedness for On-Site Violence : Security: The importance of the mock crisis at Holy Cross is underscored by the killing of Tulare medical workers.

In the first such drill since a triple shooting at Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center heightened awareness of hospital violence, about 200 SWAT members, hospital security people and paramedics converged on Holy Cross Medical Center in Mission Hills on Wednesday for a mock hostage crisis.

During the three-hour exercise, police set up command posts to communicate with SWAT snipers, the “suspect” and the hospital staff next to a training room, where 30 “hostages” were held captive by a SWAT member. As the suspect released hostages splattered with fake blood, hospital medics practiced dealing with the “mass casualty” situation.

Underscoring the importance of the drill, a patient shot a doctor and a physician’s aide to death and wounded a nurse’s aide Wednesday in Tulare, 42 miles southeast of Fresno. In a separate incident, a woman was arraigned in Detroit on Wednesday on charges stemming from a hospital shooting that wounded two employees earlier this week.

“There does seem to be a rising trend of shootings at hospitals, and maybe you can somehow put that together with the post office employees (shooting trend),” said Lt. Tom Lorenzen, head of the Los Angeles Police Department’s SWAT unit. “I can’t say what causes it. But you can never be too prepared.”

Authorities speculate that violence is more likely at crowded hospitals, where long waits in the emergency room are frequent. After the County-USC shooting in February, one victim expressed no surprise that he had been shot by a disgruntled patient.

Officials at that hospital logged an average of eight incidents of violence or threats every day during six months in 1991. And overcrowding at county hospitals is likely to get worse if supervisors approve proposed cuts to the health care system.

Holy Cross, a Catholic hospital, has never had such an incident of violence, said Sister Beth McPherson, vice president of planning and mission services. But staff at the medical center invited local law enforcement officials to hold one of their regular training exercises there, to be on the safe side, she said.

“What we learned from the shooting in February is that it’s possible, it can happen,” McPherson said. “And we want our security people to benefit from the experience of the Police Department.”

The drill was conducted in a building behind the emergency room, and patient care was not interrupted.

Although LAPD tactics have changed little since a gunman critically injured three doctors at Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center in February, hospital security staff should be aware of increasing violence at hospitals in the Los Angeles area and elsewhere, Lorenzen said. But the LAPD has not scheduled another hospital training exercise, he said.

“We feel we are very prepared in our response to these situations,” he said. “But what we do not control is how hospitals prevent something like this from happening. We can suggest that they make sure they check who goes in and who goes out, but we don’t tell hospitals what to do.”