UCLA Medical Center is a hospital located on the campus of the University of California, Los Angeles in Los Angeles, California. It is consistently rated as one of the top hospitals in the United States and is the top hospital on the West Coast. It has research centers covering nearly all major specialities of medicine as well as dentistry and optometry, and is the primary teaching hospital for the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA.

Facility

The center itself is a sprawling 11-story brick building designed by Welton Becket. It is considered a landmark of early modern architecture. The center was built in several phases, the first of which was completed in 1953. The hospital has a "tic-tac-toe" layout of intersecting wings, creating a series of courtyards throughout the complex. The first floor is unusual in that most of its walls are completely clad in a thick layer of naturally-weathered travertine, creating an unusual "organic" appearance which many have likened to "being inside of a tree". The exterior architecture is very simple, consisting of a red brick wall with horizontal bands of stainless-steel louvers over the windows to keep direct sunlight from heating the building.

Reputation in oncology research

UCLA Medical Center is well-known as the defendant in a famous Supreme Court of California case, Moore v. Regents of the University of California, 51 Cal. 3d 120 (1990) ^*. The court decided that patient John Moore had no property rights in the immensely profitable "Mo" cell line which UCLA researchers had discovered when they removed his cancerous spleen.

The UCLA "Replacement Hospital"

The existing hospital complex suffered moderate damage in the Northridge earthquake of 1994 and may not survive another earthquake. Because several hospitals were severely damaged during the Northridge quake and injured people had to be transported long distances for emergency care, the state of California passed a law requiring all hospitals to move their acute care and intensive care units into earthquake-safe buildings by 2005. The university is currently building a new UCLA Westood Replacement Hospital across the street from the current one to comply with the law. It was designed by I.M. Pei's firm and is sheathed with polished marble panels sold at below-market-rate cost by the owner of an Italian quarry whose cancer was cured at UCLA.

Some of the old complex will be torn down and some of it will be renovated and turned into office space. The law does not require that all parts of a hospital be made earthquake-safe, only the most important parts.

The new hospital is named after the late President of the United States and Governor of California, Ronald Reagan.

External links

• Main UCLA Medical Center site

University of California, Los Angeles | Hospitals in California | Teaching hospitals