The equipment closet for the operating rooms at Los Angeles
County Harbor-UCLA Hospital was a mess. Nurses had to maneuver
through a maze of wheelchairs, beds, boxes and lights just to
find supplies for surgery.
“It looked kind of like a dog pile of equipment,” said Dawna
Willsey, a clinical director at the hospital. “It was every man
for themselves trying to find anything.”
Long waits and overcrowding in the emergency room at the Contra
Costa Regional Medical Center are endangering patients, say
medical staffers, who are pushing for an expansion of the
emergency department.
But administrators say building costly additional space is only
part of the solution. The hospital also should increase access to
primary care and find ways to move patients more efficiently from
the emergency room to a hospital bed, they contend. (White,
Contra Costa Times 4/12/13)
