White Memorial Raises $30 Million for Quake-Proofing

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Supporters of White Memorial Medical Center have leveraged corporate and community connections to raise $30 million a year ahead of schedule to help pay for a new earthquake-resistant hospital building.


The Adventist Health hospital’s charitable foundation has received the $30 million in gifts of cash and pledges that will be paid through 2008. It will help complete the fourth and final phase of the $200 million, 354-bed complex which began housing patients in April 2006.


Leading the fund-raising campaign was David Lizarraga, the well connected chief executive of the economic development non-profit TELACU, and his vice chairman, George Ramirez, market president of Union Bank of California, which was among several large corporate contributors.


The pair helped tap major donors, especially in East Los Angeles’ Latino community.


“It was really a community, corporate and government partnership,” said Lizarraga. “These are not easy times, but there was a realization that with the staffing shortages and the seismic issues that hospitals face and the number of ERs and hospitals that have closed here in recent years the community needed to step up to the plate.”


Campaign cabinet members included Ruben Beltran, the Los Angeles-based Consulate General of Mexico; Frank Quevedo, a vice president at Southern California Edison; and Jorge Mettey, news director at Channel 34, whose owner Univision Communications Inc. contributed $1.5 million.


Lizarraga said an early and unexpected $1 million donation by Bank of America helped set the pace for the campaign. Professional boxer and entrepreneur Oscar de la Hoya, who earlier had given the hospital $1.5 million toward a cancer treatment center, added another $1 million to the building drive.


Rep. Lucille Roybal-Allard, D-Los Angeles, helped arrange for $1 million in federal funds. There also was significant support from nonprofits such as the Annenberg Foundation and Ralph M. Parsons Foundation.



In a Heartbeat

St. Jude Medical Inc.’s cardiac device unit in Sylmar has scored another win, obtaining U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval of an implantable defibrillator it developed that helps patients with heart failure and irregular heartbeats.


The Atlas II+ HF CRT-D is the first U.S. heart failure device to be programmed to maintain control of the rhythm of the heart’s upper chambers, or atria. The device, about the size of a pocket watch, is placed below the skin under the left collarbone with wires attached to the heart.


An estimated 5 million Americans have heart failure, and a 2003 survey indicates that heart flutters called atrial fibrillation occur in about 40 percent of those cases. The condition increases the risk of stroke and complications from the extensive drug regimens most patients are prescribed.


CRT-Ds, short for cardiac resynchronization therapy defibrillator, are a small but growing segment of the implantable defibrillator market, particularly in replacement of conventional defibrillators. While a St. Jude Medical’s spokeswoman was unable to provide a base price for the unit, industry analysts say less sophisticated CRT-Ds than the new device can run around $29,000, depending on the contracts that manufacturers strike with insurers.


St. Jude Medical’s Cardiac Rhythm Management Division employs 1,880 people in the Los Angeles area, and contributes more than 62 percent of the parent company’s revenue. The unit is the evolution of Pacesetter Systems, Los Angeles billionaire Alfred Mann’s first foray into the medical device industry in the early 1970s. Siemens AG acquired the company in 1985, and later sold it to St. Jude., based in St. Paul, Minn.



Plan Shut Down

The U.S. Department of Labor has obtained a consent judgment shutting down Paramount-based International Union of Public and Industrial Workers Canadian Benefit Fund, which investigators characterized as a “sham” health plan.


The judgment also restores $542,727 to pay pending health claims of more than 2,000 workers and families, removes officials from their positions with the fund and appoints an independent fiduciary to manage the fund’s $762,606 in assets, pay health claims and eventually terminate the plan.


Marketed nationwide, the fund covers employees in two affiliated unions, the International Union of Petroleum and Industrial Workers and the International Union of Industrial and Independent Workers. Plan officials must pay a civil monetary penalty and are permanently barred from managing any plan governed by the Employee Retirement Income Security Act.


The judgment entered by the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia in Atlanta, resolves a 2005 lawsuit that alleged mismanagement of the fund by trustees. The Los Angeles regional office of the department’s Employee Benefits Security Administration helped build the case.



Staff reporter Deborah Crowe can be reached at (323) 549-5225, ext. 232, or at

[email protected]

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