Kaiser Permanente Medical Center Los Angeles

Year Founded: 1953

Employees: 4,100

Licensed Beds: 613

1997

Occupancy Rate: 50%

Births: 3,266

Deaths: Would not disclose

Emergency Room Visits: 128,400

Surgical Operations

Inpatient: 13,024

Outpatient: Would not disclose

Located on Sunset Boulevard in East Hollywood, Kaiser Permanente Medical Center is the largest of Kaiser’s four hospitals in L.A. County, with a staff of 4,100. The facility has 613 beds and more than 1 million outpatient visits a year.

Founded in 1953, the hospital, which houses the largest radiation oncology center on the West Coast, is consistently ranked among the nation’s top 100 cancer facilities. Its chronic hemodialysis service is the only Kaiser outpatient dialysis unit in Southern California, with the capacity for about 26,000 treatments a year.

Kaiser, like other health care providers around the country, is experiencing financial difficulties these days; its California operation this year already has lost $190 million to date. Meanwhile, rapid membership growth has forced some members to seek care from non-Kaiser providers. To provide additional inpatient capacity for members, the company recently opened a new hospital in Baldwin Park. It also is aggressively recruiting nurses and implementing new management initiatives.

Kaiser also is moving forward with plans to replace its aging Los Angeles Medical Center with a new hospital facility, to be built adjacent to the current hospital, in order to be in compliance with new earthquake regulations that go into effect in 2008.

Karen Teitelman