We Have Come a Long Way
For over forty years, the residents of the Harbor-UCLA Emergency Medicine Residency Program have played an integral role in delivering care to the largely underserved communities of south Los Angeles County. The County of Los Angeles purchased the Harbor General Hospital from the United States Army in 1946, and the current eight-story structure has been around since 1962.
Established in 1978, the Emergency Medicine Residency Program was among the first emergency medicine training programs in the country. The rebranding of the hospital as Harbor-UCLA Medical Center took place in the same year. The structure also hosted the first hospital-based paramedic training program in the nation. Upon completion in 2013, the new Surgery Emergency Building included a new emergency department, operating rooms, hospital entrance, and atrium.
Now, Harbor-UCLA Medical Center is a 72-acre facility with an eight-story, 553-bed hospital and a 52,000-square-foot Primary Care and Diagnostic Center, serving more than 700,000 residents in the greater South Bay community. The Surgery Emergency Building added 190,300 square feet of space, with 16 operating rooms and a high-volume, high-acuity Emergency Department that is the only Level 1 Trauma Center, Pediatric Trauma Center, Pediatric Critical Medical Center, Disaster Resource Center, Stroke Center, Academic STEMI Receiving Center, and Nursing and Paramedic Training Center in the South Bay of Los Angeles.
Harbor-UCLA Medical Center has approximately 300 full-time faculty and nearly 450 residents and fellows in training. We look forward to the completion of our new hospital building by 2028 to further provide state-of-the-art care for our patients.
Some Fun Facts About Harbor-UCLA Medical Center and the Department of Emergency Medicine
- Harbor’s first inpatient was a plane crash trauma victim in 1946, who survived.
- Harbor offered the nation’s first hospital-based paramedic training program in 1969.
- Filming of the popular television show “Emergency!” (1972 to 1977) took place at Harbor.
- Marianne Gausche-Hill was the nation’s first emergency medicine residency-trained PEM fellow.
- Robert S. Hockberger (Chair Emeritus) and Dr. Marianne Gausche-Hill are the Senior Editors of Rosen’s Emergency Medicine.
- Amy Kajiwas a former President of SAEM.
- Harbor-UCLA Emergency Medicine Residents won ACEP SimWars three years in a row, from 2014 to 2016.