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Life & Times Transcript
10/03/06 Val Zavala>> Tonight on Life and Times -- Southern California's shrinking emergency care. Can we afford to lose another ER? Nancy Watson>> The lives of the many people who use these hospitals, where would they go to be able to get to those facilities in time? Ross Strange>> I'm not against having an urgent care center, but I don't want it to replace the emergency center. Val Zavala>> And then, shining some light on history. An artist collects highlights of Los Angeles's street lamps from years gone by. These stories and more next on tonight's Life and Times. Announcer>> Life and Times is made possible through the generous support of the L.K. Whittier Foundation dedicated to improving the quality of life by supporting innovative endeavors in the fields of medicine, health, science and education. And by a generous grant from Jim and Anne Rothenberg. Val Zavala>> Over the past five years, nine emergency rooms have closed in Los Angeles County and now a tenth one is on the verge of shutting down. It is the ER at Daniel Freeman Hospital in Inglewood and, last year, it treated more than thirty-five thousand patients. So where will these people go? Well, as Toni Guinyard tells us, hospital officials say that most of them shouldn't have been coming to the ER in the first place. Toni Guinyard>> This is the emergency room at Memorial Hospital. Most people still call it Daniel Freeman Memorial. >> "I want you to put it back on that lady and then I want to wait until we see those pacer spikes and then I want you to do it again." Toni Guinyard>> Despite the name change, all of the activity and the steady stream of patients, this ER is scheduled to be silenced by mid-December. Michael Rembis>> We're not abandoning the communities. We're going to be here long-term. Toni Guinyard>> Michael Rembis is President and CEO of Centinela Freeman Health System. He says the decision was made to close the ER at Memorial and consolidate emergency services at its sister campus, Centinela Hospital. It was made because of what he called the inappropriate use of the emergency room. Michael Rembis>> We see patients at our emergency room that truly have a child with an earache or someone who needs an insulin shot, things that really should be taken care of in a physician's office or a community clinic. Instead, what they're doing is congesting the emergency room, delaying treatment for many other emergency patients that need to be seen immediately. Deborah Ettinger>> They use the emergency department as their family doctor. That's a lousy way to get health care. Toni Guinyard>> Health System Vice President, Deborah Ettinger, says a study of the hospital found that what this community really needs are one hundred sixty primary care doctors and one hundred three internal medicine physicians to keep patients out of the ER. The study also concluded that only thirty-three percent of the patients who came in to this emergency room actually needed emergency care, so as part of the consolidation, this ER will be transformed into an urgent care center open twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Deborah Ettinger>> By having that available, we think that we're going to provide better access for families that have historically used the emergency department. Toni Guinyard>> Long-time Inglewood resident, Ross Strange, isn't buying it. Ross Strange>> I'm not against having an urgent care center, but I don't want it to replace the emergency center. I have used Daniel Freeman ER at least ten times and needed to and all of them were hospitalization. All of them were urgently needed. They were emergencies. Toni Guinyard>> Keeping the ER open topped her list of priorities. She's fighting back by collecting signatures on petitions, going to meetings and making phone calls. Ross Strange>> The meeting is for the petition to sign the Save Our ER at Daniel Freeman Hospital. I've never had a petition in my hand before. I have a petition that I'm getting everyone to sign. I stop the person on the street to make them aware of what the situations are. My personal belief is that the hospital is on a fast-track to closing. Toni Guinyard>> They say they aren't. Ross Strange>> I know. They say that they are not going to, but I don't believe that because of all of the different departments that they're closing down systematically. Toni Guinyard>> The decision to close the ER and open urgent care facilities has clearly struck a nerve with Strange and she can trace her anger back to past closures of hospitals in the community. Ross Strange>> It started with the closure of Robert Kennedy, so that was a facility that was closed. Now King is in limbo as to whether or not it's going to survive. Then Freeman announces that they're going to close the emergency. Then what do we have? Where do we go? What do we do? It's just absolutely not acceptable. It's not acceptable. Nancy Watson>> There are nine hospitals since 2003 that had emergency rooms and this would be the tenth. Toni Guinyard>> As Policy Director for Health Care Access and Quality, Nancy Watson says the proposed closure of Memorial Hospital's ER is bad enough, but combined with the threatened closure of King/Drew Medical Center, she calls this the worst possible thing that can happen to the community. At stake? Nancy Watson>> The lives of the many people who use these hospitals. Where will they go to be able to get to those facilities in time? Furthermore, you know, what's the impact on the other hospitals in the surrounding region? Michael Rembis>> It is a separate issue. There are three hospitals between us and Martin Luther King and, unfortunately, if anything happened to reduce services, all the hospitals in the community will be impacted. Toni Guinyard>> Including Memorial and Centinela. Deborah Ettinger>> We've got lots of hospitals that have closed or they closed emergency departments. That all stresses the emergency system and the health care system in general. Jacqueline Herd>> What we're trying to do is fix the system. Toni Guinyard>> Memorial's Chief Nursing Officer, Jacqueline Herd. Jacqueline Herd>> You can plant as many emergency departments as you want, but it still doesn't take care of the real problem and it's having access to primary care where they can get their medications, where they can get information and education about their disease processed. Michael Rembis>> If we could have clinics reopened by the county, if we could get additional financial resources from the state or the Feds, then I think all the health care providers together could try to find better solutions, better models, for service to the communities. Deborah Ettinger>> This is not helping anybody. It's not helping the emergency ambulances that need to get really critically ill patients into an emergency room bed. It's slowing up the works and it's not helping that person that needs a family doctor, so we've got to stop it. I think that there's no one solution. This is one step in the way and I think we're trying to do something right. It's a great deal of change and I know the community is concerned about it. Toni Guinyard>> So concerned that hospital administrators might find themselves in an uphill fight to change the way the community uses the emergency room while some community members wage their own battle to change the decision to shut down one more ER. Nancy Watson>> We want a task force put together to figure out, okay, how do we continue to provide the same level of inpatient hospital services and emergency services to the community? Ross Strange>> The community is suffering because of the people who live in the community. I don't think that we're being given the consideration that we deserve. Toni Guinyard>> Minority communities? Ross Strange>> Minority communities. Toni Guinyard>> Do you feel you have a need to consult with the community? Michael Rembis>> I feel we have a need to communicate with the community, to talk to them and consult with certain members of the community. It's hard to consult with the entire community. Ross Strange>> I don't think I'll ever reach the point where I'll say I have to let it go. As long as I'm able to get out there and walk, as long as I'm able to talk with anyone, as long as I'm able to get a petition signed, I'm not going to give it up. Toni Guinyard>> I'm Toni Guinyard -- Ross Strange>> "Okay, well, could you just take one of the petitions and kind of circulate that among your compatriots and your friends?" Toni Guinyard>> -- for Life and Times. Announcer>> Kcet.org is the place to look for the very latest on Life and Times. You'll find previews of upcoming stories, plus transcripts and audio of past episodes and links to some of our most interesting features. Just go to kcet.org, scroll down the page and click on "Life and Times". Val Zavala>> If you don't think there's a problem with drugs in sports, just watch the headlines for a few weeks. The latest is star pitcher, Roger Clemens, who allegedly used performance-enhancing drugs. But some people say that steroids and other drugs are just part of the game these days and perhaps they should be legalized. For some thoughts on that, we brought three people together for one of our "Kitchen Conversations". Diana Nyad is a sports commentator and reporter. Helene Elliott covers sports for the Los Angeles Times. And Joe Hicks moderates our conversation. He's Vice President of CommUnity Advocates, Inc. Joe Hicks>> We're going to be talking about sports doping today and I made just a little list of people here that come to mind. Floyd Landis, Barry Bonds, Marion Jones, Justin Gatlin, Mark McGuire. That's just a short list. We got a lot of people doing this and I guess the temptation is to say we live in a drug-obsessed culture. What's the big deal? Let's just legalize it and be done with it. What's the problem? Helene Elliott>> There is a school of thought to this that maybe there should be parallel competition, one competition for athletes who are clean and the other one for athletes who are doping. Then one of the problems that comes up is that it comes up haves and have-nots. If you can afford to buy the drug, you can compete and win. Joe Hicks>> But there's a Mr. Clean bodybuilding competition and nobody comes and nobody cares because all the big dudes -- Helene Elliott>> -- you just answered your question. Diana Nyad>> There's a middle ground too between let's just let it all go, forget the drug testing, we can't tell who's clean and dirty, just let them go, and let's define the testing. The science is getting clearer. There's a middle ground between that. I've interviewed a lot of Tour de France cyclists who are willing to say off the record that the rest of us just don't understand what they do. Track and field athletes will tell you same thing. A lineman will tell you the same thing in the NFL. They don't look at this as cheating. They don't look at taking a little pill of Dianabol every day is going to make them a more talented athlete. They think that that will make them come to their potential. Their potential will come to fruition in a less injured way, in a quicker way. So there are Tour de France cyclists who say, you know, listen, nobody can make me climb that fourteen percent grade faster than I do. No drug can do that. But I take this drug so that I can recuperate and I can train harder. The rest of the world, you know, whether it be as you alluded to in the beginning, Joe, the rest of the world is taking all kinds of chemical manipulations to improve their memory, their sex lives, their xxyz -- Joe Hicks>> -- Botox. Diana Nyad>> Yeah, but why shouldn't an athlete if they don't look at it as cheating? They look at it as though it's a tool. Joe Hicks>> But, Helene, do you think that the average fans who go to ballparks care that Barry Bonds may or may not utilize something that helps him hit the ball out of the park? I mean, he may get booed in other parks, but the guy is still a hero in San Francisco. They want to catch that ball. They want to go out to the bay and get his ball. Helene Elliott>> I don't think they want to catch the ball because they idolize him. They want to catch the ball because they want to auction it. Joe Hicks>> Sell it (laughter). Helene Elliott>> And make their child's tuition payment. Joe Hicks>> But does the average fan care that people are shooting up or using cream? Do they care? Helene Elliott>> I think they do. I think, on some level, you do and I think, on some level, you should. I mean, what we're all brought up with is that, you know, you go out and you run a race, it's equal. I mean, you have the ability and the freedom to train as much as you want and practice as much as you want, eat the right diet. But the idea is that essentially the bedrock is fair competition. Joe Hicks>> Is it fair to the kid that doesn't want to use substances? You know, just wants to hit the ball as hard as he can based on practice and whatnot, or the guy who wants to be a decathlete or something? Those that aren't using it? The people that are obviously going to be the most successful may be the people using substances, but is it fair to that kid? Diana Nyad>> Well, I guess you'd have to say it isn't because, you know, we could say as many baseball players have said, look, you know, you hit a ball because you've got eye-hand coordination, you're reading a pitch that's coming in at ninety-eight miles an hour. It has nothing to do with strength, but once you put on fifty pounds of pure muscle, it wasn't your muscle that you couldn't get from weightlifting and just eating a great Wheaties breakfast. Then, of course, when you connect, that mass is going to send that ball out into McCovey's Cove rather than ending short of the four hundred foot mark. You know, I guess we'd have to say, of course, it isn't. But on the other hand, we're sort of in this era of chemical manipulation. First-chair violinists, you know, from most symphony orchestras take a beta blocker to help calm their nerves. It doesn't mean that now that's going to give them extra dexterity in their fingers or make them interpret Mozart better than they used to. They had that talent and that hard work to start with. There are a lot of athletes that are on that fence right now out there feeling like, hey, I'm in the modern world and I'm never going to get Olympic medal unless I play the game. Joe Hicks>> And we live in a win-obsessed world. We want people to win, win at all costs, and that's the ethos. We see it in special sports. People don't care how you get there. You just want to be able to say they won, my team won, my guy won. Don't we almost -- not to say it's excusable, but aren't we encouraging athletes to engage in this kind of behavior? Helene Elliott>> I'm not encouraging any athlete personally to do that. I'd rather see a fair fight. I mean, when you're talking about the violinist who takes the beta blocker, that sets an example, but, I mean, what a violinist or musician does, the performance is subjective. An athlete, a baseball player, a track athlete, is objective. You ran such and such a time, you did this and that. There has to be some kind of even footing. There has to be some kind of inherent assumption of fairness, of everybody is on a level playing field, or else it's completely meaningless. If we've gotten to the point where you have to destroy your body to win -- and you were saying about the Tour de France, the people who say I have to take this to recover quicker, maybe the race shouldn't be so hard that they have to take that drug. Joe Hicks>> What happens, say, if we legalize it. We say, oh, we know everybody is doing it. Let's get real here. What does that ultimately do, though, to have this concept of force in me that acknowledges you can? Even if you may not have access to it, some will and some won't acknowledge that it's okay. It's okay to use performance -- Diana Nyad>> -- you know, this might sound way out there, but when the three of us are real old on the proverbial rocking chair on the front porch -- Joe Hicks>> -- I'm too close for comfort. I'm not comfortable with that (laughter). Helene Elliott>> That's way down the road for all of us. Diana Nyad>> Okay, we're not near it, but let's just say I don't think it's the craziest thing in the world to turn on our television and we're going to watch an NFL game and the announcer says, "Here comes blah-blah-blah, the linebacker for the Cleveland Browns, and you know, it's interesting. His doctor switched him this year to Dianabol and he's taking a little bit less of a dose of it and I think, you know, it's just what he needed to make seven tackles a game this year." I actually think, even though the science is now catching up to the cheating athlete that's getting better, a little closer. I personally think that, in the future, maybe right at this moment because we're still in the big fight, I think fifteen or twenty years or thirty years down the road at least, I think we're going to be into full-fledged what used to be Wheaties, now it's Dianabol. Joe Hicks>> What if it's a fifteen year old kid? How does he interpret it? Will it dissuade him? Will it actually cause him, well, you know, if I try this stuff, maybe I'll run faster, get bigger, whatever? Will it encourage this? Helene Elliott>> That's a good question. It's only human nature to try and cheat in a kind of way that, you know, for now you're ahead of the testing. The testers are usually taking six months to a year behind the new chemicals that are selling, so maybe for six months, you're ahead of the game. But can you live with yourself afterwards? Can you? Diana Nyad>> You know, where the real difficulty is and this biggest problem is when you talk about a fifteen year old kid, he doesn't have to be the athlete. The athletes are doing it for all the reasons we talked about right here. But it's the body image and we're big on that, bigger than winning. We're big on body image in this country. It's that girl and boy who is fifteen years old who says I'm never going to run track. I'm never going to play any sport. I'm never going to be tested, but I want to look like that. Joe Hicks>> That's got to be the last word. We've flat run out of time. Thanks, guys, for coming and having this session. I don't think we solved a whole lot of things, but good session. Thanks a lot. Helene Elliott>> Thank you. Announcer>> To send a comment or a question to our program, you can reach us by mail at this address: Life and Times 4401 Sunset Blvd. Los Angeles, California 90027 You can also call our viewer comment line (323) 953-5555) or contact us the fast way by e-mail at kcet.org. Val Zavala>> Don't you love those great old historic street lights? The modern ones may throw off more light, but they don't have nearly the charm. Well, now there's a place where you can see a whole collection of old street lights and, as Vicki Curry tells us, it's worth getting out of your car and taking a stroll. Vicki Curry>> It's an average mini mall like countless others throughout southern California until you take a closer look at the row of street lamps in the middle of the parking lot. This is Vermonica, an installation of twenty-five different lights used to illuminate the streets of Los Angeles. Stan Horwitz>> I think it shows a lot of things that you can't really describe any other way but looking at them and it brings a lot of styles together and different heights and so on that you can't really see unless they're in one place, so it's really something unique. It's the only place in the city where we have something like this that's actually operating. It actually works. Vicki Curry>> Vermonica is the creation of Sheila Klein, an artist who's since moved out of Los Angeles. She got the idea in 1993 to put together an impromptu museum to shed light on this small part of Los Angeles history. She named it Vermonica after its location at the corner of Vermont Avenue and Santa Monica Boulevard. Jeff Ziliotto, you've been with the Bureau of Street Lighting since 1980, since you were involved in the installation of this project in 1993? Jeff Ziliotto>> Yes, I was. We were approached by Sheila Klein. She went through our management and our management appointed me as the lead person to take on this project and then I employed volunteers from the Bureau. On weekends, we'd come out here in months before the dedication, which was in May of 1993, to put it all together. Vicki Curry>> Klein worked with the City Bureau of Street Lighting to pick from the hundreds of different street lamps used throughout Los Angeles's history. Stan Horwitz>> The Bureau of Street Lighting has only been in place since 1925, but late 1800s is when street lighting started in the city of Los Angeles. But it wasn't until about 1905 when we had our first what we call ornamental street lights, the ones that are decorative and low and of a scale that's more pedestrian, not way up in the air. So between about 1905 and 1940, that's what I'd call the era of ornamental lighting in Los Angeles when a lot of neighborhoods and business areas put in very decorative lights. They weren’t necessarily to get a certain lighting level. They were for some lighting, but they were to be decorative and they were called ornamental. The city of Los Angeles, the property owners, had to pay for the cost of the installing of the lights and the operating of the lights as well. Some neighborhoods wanted to have something interesting and especially from, let's say, in the 1920s and 1930s. They wanted to have this interesting thing that kind of was the symbol of their neighborhood, you might say. Vicki Curry>> Between the different poles and lighting fixtures, the possible variations of street lamps are endless. Now you've actually tried to put together a list of all the different lampposts that have existed in Los Angeles. Jeff Ziliotto>> Yes. It will be a living document, but so far, I've gotten to about six hundred-plus styles of poles, not counting all their variations. That could easily reach up to a thousand. Included in that list would be all the ones that are no longer in service or have been removed from service. We have some of those in our own museum yards that are rusting away, but at least they're not out where they can be damaged or in a scrap pile somewhere. Vicki Curry>> And even though you have your facility right across the street and you have kind of your own little museum of historical lampposts, this is really the only place the public can see this range of work, right? Jeff Ziliotto>> Right. The showcase is twenty-five different styles. Not only the styles of poles, but there are fixtures that some are obsolete or on the endangered species list basically. Vicki Curry>> The twenty-five lampposts at Vermonica include nine modern style lights. Those have an arm on top so the light is disbursed over a bigger area. Modern styles usually also have a plain concrete post, but the older lampposts can be so incredibly detailed that it's more fun to look at them in the light of day. They often have decoration at the base of the post, along the length of the pole, and all the way up to the top of the fixture. This one seems particularly ornate. Jeff Ziliotto>> Yes. This was installed on Olympic Boulevard. If you look at its top, it has a double dragon. Vicki Curry>> Dragon? Jeff Ziliotto>> Yeah, it looks like a lion's head with a dragon body. We haven't really come up with what it actually looks like, but there's dispute. Plus, at the very top, thirty feet in the air, there's an ornate bowl of fruit for its top ornament. It has bananas and apples and grapes. So it shows that, years ago, they were craftsmen. They had a lot of pride and integrity in their community and they designed something that the developers wanted for the area. It seemed like streets would outdo each other. You'd have these on Olympic and then there's a version of something else on Wilshire and something else totally different on Pico. Like this particular one here is located in the Benedict Canyon. The one next to you is in the Bel Aire Estates. Vicki Curry>> And you were saying that one is modeled after a New York City street lamp? Jeff Ziliotto>> Yes. It's the Central Park lighting fixture. If you see a movie with Central Park, you'll recognize it right away. We call it Melrose Hills. This one we used to call the Bundy light, but it's actually a Walker, after further investigation. It was made by the Walker Company and it was installed on Bundy Drive. Vicki Curry>> And that's why it was called the Bundy originally? Jeff Ziliotto>> Right. Many poles will take their names from the areas they're installed. This one is a three-light pole. Vicki Curry>> Which is very unusual. Jeff Ziliotto>> Very unusual for these times. For its day, that was the normal thing. The key thing is that these are no longer in service and they have not been in service for over fifty years. Vicki Curry>> Oh, really? So do you know what year this was first used approximately? Jeff Ziliotto>> There's no one left at Street Lighting that can tell me, even my dad who used to work here. Vicki Curry>> Right. He doesn't know either. Jeff Ziliotto>> No, he just told me that, when he worked here, all the years he knew, it was never in service. There's one other one that doesn't exist anymore. I personally took the last one out of service to preserve it. Vicki Curry>> Oh, really? Jeff Ziliotto>> That's the centerpiece of the Vermonica exhibit. Vicki Curry>> Although those two lamps are no longer in use, many historic streetlights are still illuminating streets somewhere in Los Angeles, but most of us would never notice. We just go about our daily routines and not paying much attention to the lights that show us the way. If you ever wanted to take a closer look, Vermonica is the place to go. Luckily, even though the installation was supposed to come down after one year, it still stands today, showing us how Los Angeles's street lights are as diverse as the city itself. Val Zavala>> And that's our program. I'm Val Zavala. For everyone at Life and Times, thanks for watching. We'll see you next time. Announcer>> Life and Times was made possible through the generous support of the L.K. Whittier Foundation dedicated to improving the quality of life by supporting innovative endeavors in the fields of medicine, health, science and education. And by a generous grant from Jim and Anne Rothenberg. Sponsored in part by:  | |
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