Patients See Need for a Bigger Facility

At the walk-in emergency room, where two hours is considered a short wait, it was hard to find anyone who could see sense in the idea. Yes, County-USC is an old hospital. Yes, a more modern facility is long overdue. But a smaller one?

“They need a bigger place, so that they attend to us better,” said Tomas Aguirre, a 50-year-old immigrant from Huehuetenango, Guatemala. “People barely fit in here already.”

It was a sentiment repeated again and again by patients throughout the sprawling, 66-year-old Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center, which sits atop a hill in Lincoln Heights, facing west like a huge, concrete battleship.

“They should leave this place as a museum,” said Pedro Ybarra, 58. “I think it’s good if they build a new building for more people.”

Tuesday was a typically busy weekday at the hospital, with literally hundreds of doctors, patients, technicians and relatives milling about the main corridor, a hallway the length of a football field, where painted lines help guide the uninitiated through the maze.

At the end of the blue line is the pharmacy, where Lena Evans spoke with some sadness about the hospital’s impending closure. The county Board of Supervisors voted Tuesday to replace the aging medical center with a smaller, 600-bed facility. Evans was born at “County General” 40 years ago, and over the decades has seen the hospital go from good, to bad, to good again.

“It’s been here a long time, I’d hate to see it go,” she said. “It’s much more organized than it used to be.” The last time she visited the hospital, several years back, “it was crazy. People were everywhere hanging around. Even in the pharmacy, it was crazy.”

Indeed, a decade ago, County-USC was infamous for the homeless men and women who slept in its corridors, for the moaning patients in gurneys parked in the hallways. The hospital reached a nadir in 1993, when three doctors were wounded during an emergency room shooting.

“People used to be scared to come here,” said Miguel Delgado, a 23-year-old cancer patient. “They said, ‘I don’t want to go because I’ll die there.’ ”

Those fears seemed to belong to a faraway past Tuesday, as Delgado sat recuperating in a wheelchair, taking in the sun and the breeze outside the hospital’s main entrance. He credited the hospital’s doctors with allowing him to walk again, about two weeks after a remission of cancer left him partially paralyzed.

“I was in chemo before, but I stopped coming because I was feeling better,” he said. “I messed up.”

Like tens of thousands treated at the public facility each year, Delgado ended up at the hospital because he couldn’t afford to go anywhere else.

Generations of Angelenos have been born and restored to good health in the facility, which was first funded by a 1925 bond measure. Even in the worst of times, the hospital and its staff have stood for the Progressive Era ideals etched in concrete above the front door:

“Erected by the citizens of the County of Los Angeles to provide hospital care for the acutely ill and suffering . . . without charge . . . in order that no citizen of the county shall be deprived of health or life for lack of such care.”

Today, even the poorest patients are expected to contribute at least a token amount toward their care. Kenneth, a janitor and 46-year-old resident of skid row who declined to give his last name, said he expected to be charged at least $60 to be treated for a pain in his throat.

“I think I have cancer in my throat,” he said. Already into his third hour of waiting for treatment, he expected to wait three more. “It sucks,” he said.

Kenneth said he has visited the emergency room about 50 times over the years. He, too, has seen conditions improve over the chaos of a few years back when “guys used to sleep in here.”

A numbered ticket dispenser stood unused and the “Now Serving” counter was frozen at “635.” Instead of numbers, the nurses and administrators called out patients’ names.

Pedro Ybarra waited patiently for his turn.

“They treated me really well last time I was here,” Ybarra said in Spanish. “I hope they don’t close it.”

A few minutes later, a nurse called out “Pedro Ybarra!” He rose to his feet with the help of a cane, hoping that the doctors would find a way to make the pain in his leg go away.