Loma Linda University Medical Center
Loma Linda University Medical Center (LLUMC) is an academic hospital in California's Inland Empire region. Opened more than 100 years ago, it has trauma center that admits over one million patient yearly, around 900 faculty physicians and over 1,000 beds. The main tower of the center was built in 1967 and is 16 stories high. Currently, the hospital is building two new hospital towers. It is one of the tallest buildings in the Inland Empire. Because of its height and white coloration, it is possible to view the main hospital building from various locations  around the San Bernardino valley and mountains. Loma Linda University Medical Center made international news on October 26, 1984, when Dr. Leonard L. Bailey transplanted a baboon heart into Baby Fae, an infant born with a severe heart defect known as hypoplastic left heart syndrome. Baby Fae died a few weeks later; however, this effort led to the successful infant heart transplant program, with transplantation of human-to-human infant transplants. LLUMC is home to the Venom E.R., which specializes in snake bites. In 2014, LLUMC was ranked the 14th best hospital in California by the U.S. News & World Report . Loma Linda University. Loma Linda University Medical Center is the teaching hospital for Loma Linda University, which includes schools of medicine, nursing, pharmacy, dentistry, allied health, religion, public health, and behavioral health. Children's hospital. Loma Linda University Children's Hospital is the sole children's hospital for almost 1.3 million of California's youth (San Bernardino, Riverside, Inyo, and Mono Counties). The hospital provides comprehensive pediatric specialties and subspecialties to infants, children, teens, and young adults aged 0–21 throughout the region. With over 275 beds just for children, the American College of Surgeons has designated the Children's Hospital  as a Level 1 Trauma Center, providing the highest level of trauma care within the Inland Empire four-county area. Each year, more than 15,000 children stay at the hospital and over 130,000 children visit the hospital for ambulatory care. The only medical facility in the Inland Empire specializing in the care of children, Children's Hospital transports over 1,100 critically ill or injured children each year from surrounding hospitals. Proton treatment and research center. The James M. Slater Proton Treatment and Research Center at Loma Linda University Medical Center (LLUMC) offers proton therapy treatments for prostate, lung, brain and  other types of cancers. This center is the nation's first hospital-based proton treatment center. Since its opening in 1990 over 14,500 patients have been treated. Through a multidisciplinary approach, teams of experts including radiation oncologists, nurses, technicians and staff treat patients with care to ensure they experience fewer side effects and better outcomes with the power and precision of proton therapy. Using high-energy protons for medical treatment was first proposed in 1946. Protons were first used to treat patients with certain cancers less than 10 years later. Research and laboratory applications increased rapidly in the next three  decades. It was not until the opening of the James M. Slater Proton Treatment and Research Center at Loma Linda University Medical Center in 1990, however, that the full benefits of proton treatment could be offered to patients with a wide variety of cancers. The synchrotron was invented in the 1950s to produce higher-energy particles for studying subnuclear matter. Much of that work was done at the U.S. Department of Energy's Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab). Fermilab physicists and engineers built the proton accelerator that exists at Loma Linda University Medical Center today. LLUMC's accelerator is the  world's smallest variable-energy proton synchrotron. It is designed to deliver a beam of energy sufficient to reach the deepest tumors in patients. Surgical hospital. In May 2008, it was announced that LLUMC had been in talks since December and had finalized a buyout of the 28-bed California Heart and Surgical Center located approximately two miles east of the main campus on the border of Loma Linda and Redlands, California. This was a marked departure of their previous position of opposition to the facility when it was first proposed in 2005. The Heart and Surgical Center would have  been a for-profit facility while the Loma Linda is a non-profit facility and it was feared by area hospitals, including Loma Linda, that the Heart and Surgical Center would take all the paying patients. However, Loma Linda finalized the construction and furnishing of the center and in January 2009, they received state approval to open and begin operations as Loma Linda University Heart & Surgical Hospital. The daVinci Robot that was operated at the Medical Center to perform minimally invasive robotic surgeries was moved to the Surgical Hospital. The hospital is now known as Loma Linda University Surgical Hospital , when heart operations were moved to the main medical center. Seismic upgrade project. The main hospital building is currently undergoing a seismic upgrade project. It is being headed by Turner Construction Company of New York, NY. The project includes reinforcing the main building to bring it up to California state standards. Controversy. Medicare lawsuits. In 2004, Loma Linda University Behavioral Medicine Center paid 2.2 million dollars to settle a federal lawsuit that the organization had over-billed federal health insurance programs. The lawsuit alleged that its billing service had prepared two different cost reports, one for internal use and an  inflated one to bill Medicare. In 2005, a group of 20 physician corporations paid to settle a federal lawsuit over fraudulent Medicare billings reviewed under the Physicians at Teaching Hospitals (PaTH) initiative. The lawsuit alleged that the hospital had been billing Medicare for procedures done by residents and interns as if they had been done by the attending physicians.