UCLA Medical Center

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 UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine .

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 lovely new "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. When it opens in 2005, the new hospital will be known as the Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center.

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.