Olive View–UCLA Medical Center is a

hospital A hospital is a healthcare institution providing patient treatment with specialized Medical Science, health science and auxiliary healthcare staff and medical equipment. The best-known type of hospital is the general hospital, which typically ...

, funded by

Los Angeles County Los Angeles County, officially the County of Los Angeles and sometimes abbreviated as LA County, is the most populous county in the United States, with 9,663,345 residents estimated in 2023. Its population is greater than that of 40 individua ...

, located in the Sylmar neighborhood of

Los Angeles, California Los Angeles, often referred to by its initials L.A., is the List of municipalities in California, most populous city in the U.S. state of California, and the commercial, Financial District, Los Angeles, financial, and Culture of Los Angeles, ...

. It is one of the primary healthcare delivery systems in the north

San Fernando Valley The San Fernando Valley, known locally as the Valley, is an urbanized valley in Los Angeles County, Los Angeles County, California. Situated to the north of the Los Angeles Basin, it comprises a large portion of Los Angeles, the Municipal corpo ...

, serving the area's large working-class population. Olive View is also the closest county hospital serving the

Antelope Valley The Antelope Valley is a valley primarily located in northern Los Angeles County, California, United States and the southeast portion of Kern County, California, Kern County, and constitutes the western tip of the Mojave Desert. It is situated ...

after High Desert Hospital was converted to an urgent care clinic in 2003.

Overview

The 355-bed replacement facility built on the old Sylmar site was opened on May 8, 1987. Olive View incorporated UCLA in its name, becoming Olive View–UCLA Medical Center in 1992. In May 1997, Olive View–UCLA Medical Center became a part of ValleyCare, which maintains responsibility for the care of the medically indigent, low income, uninsured residents of the San Fernando and Santa Clarita Valleys. Olive View–UCLA Medical Center has an affiliation with the

David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA The UCLA School of Medicine (also known as the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA) is the accredited medical school of the University of California, Los Angeles. Founded in 1951, it is the second medical school in the University of Califor ...

, offering residency programs in major specialty areas as well as providing an on-campus School of Nursing. It is also a rotation site for medical students at UCLA.

History

The hospital was founded on October 27, 1920, as a

tuberculosis Tuberculosis (TB), also known colloquially as the "white death", or historically as consumption, is a contagious disease usually caused by ''Mycobacterium tuberculosis'' (MTB) bacteria. Tuberculosis generally affects the lungs, but it can al ...

(TB) sanatorium to relieve overcrowding at County General Hospital, and when it was no longer needed for TB treatment, the facilities became an acute care hospital in 1970. In 1962, Olive View Hospital performed the first open heart surgery successfully in the San Fernando Valley, and one of the first in Southern California. The hospital was known as Olive View Hospital before it became affiliated with the University of California, Los Angeles's School of Medicine in 1970. Olive View Hospital became Olive View Medical Center, a teaching hospital and a new 888-bed hospital was dedicated in December, 1970. The hospital was severely damaged six weeks after it opened during the

1971 San Fernando earthquake The 1971 San Fernando earthquake (also known as the 1971 Sylmar earthquake) occurred in the early morning of February 9 in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains in Southern California. The unanticipated thrust earthquake had a magnitude o ...

on February 9, 1971, which caused the collapse of the four stairwell wings, as well as the parking structure. The first floor columns of the five-story main structure nearly failed as well, shifting the entire building 18 inches off center to the north, which nearly brought down the entire structure. The building was damaged beyond repair, and subsequently vacated, abandoned, and demolished by implosion on May 31, 1973. For the next sixteen years, Olive View served its patients through an interim facility at MidValley in Van Nuys. On March 9, 1975, Department of Health Services Security Officer Murray F. Olsen was killed in the line of duty on the grounds of Olive View Medical Center. Olsen observed a suspect crash his truck through the gates of the medical center parking lot, and race onto the vacant hospital grounds. Pursuing the suspect in his county patrol car, he made a vehicle stop and confronted the suspect, Steven Vyeda of Watsonville, CA. Responding

LAPD The City of Los Angeles Police Department, commonly referred to as Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD), is the primary law enforcement agency of Los Angeles, California, United States. With 8,832 officers and 3,000 civilian staff, it is the th ...

officers found Officer Olson deceased on the ground next to his vehicle; he had been stabbed and then shot with his own weapon. His official cause of death was "contusion of spinal cord, gunshot wound to face, multiple stab wounds" per the Coroner's report. The suspect was shot and killed by LAPD officers later that day. The rebuilt Olive View–UCLA Medical Center was opened in 1987. In June 1992,

Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors (LACBOS) is the five-member Board of Supervisors, governing body of Los Angeles County, California, United States. History On April 1, 1850 the citizens of Los Angeles elected a three-man Court of Se ...

approved postgraduate physicians from Cedars-Sinai Medical Center to work at Olive View–UCLA Medical Center. Physicians can now receive training not available at Cedars-Sinai. Olive View–UCLA Medical Center in Sylmar is provided with three additional doctors at a cost to the county of $9,000 a month. The 2008

Sayre Fire The Sayre Fire, also known as the Sylmar Fire, was a November 2008 wildfire which burned 489 residences in Los Angeles, considered to be the "worst loss of homes due to fire" in the city's history at that time. The fire was first reported at 10 ...

caused damage to several outbuildings, and led to an evacuation of the intensive care patients from the hospital.

In popular culture

Before the 1973 demolition, the hospital served as a filming location, where it played itself in a 1973 episode of the ''

Emergency! ''Emergency!'' is an American Action fiction, action-adventure medical drama television series jointly produced by Mark VII Limited and Universal Television. Debuting on NBC as a midseason replacement on January 15, 1972, replacing two situatio ...

'' television show. It also served as the set for a nuclear war-damaged then-futuristic jail facility in the TV series '' Mission Impossible'' in the seventh-season episode "Two Thousand". The current facility was used in scenes for the 1987 film '' Over the Top'' starring Sylvester Stallone.

Notable staff

* Selma Calmes, co-founder of the Anesthesia History Association, former chair of the department of anesthesiology.

References

External links