FORUM SPEAKERS PRESS HOSPITAL TO CUT WAITS.

Byline: Janet Gilmore and Lisa Van Proyen Daily News Staff Writers

It's been nearly two years since administrators at Olive View-UCLA Medical Center promised profound changes that would make 12-hour emergency-room waits a thing of the past.

But members of community groups say people continue to complain about six-hour waits, 12-hour waits and even 24-hour waits. And on Thursday, the group Valley Organized In Community Efforts joined with patients to confront hospital officials to ask how they would reduce emergency-room waits and improve services.

``We think 12 or 20 hours is not humane,'' said Lenor Ramirez, an organizer for VOICE, a network of community religious organizations, in an interview. ``It's definitely not prompt.''

Following the financial near-collapse of Los Angeles County's sprawling health care system in 1995, officials won federal grants with the provision that they would change radically how patients are treated. The plan was to move most medical care into community clinics and reserve the emergency rooms for emergencies.

VOICE maintained that Olive View's emergency room continues to be clogged because the county has not done enough to publicize the new network of 14 local clinics. The waits could be cut significantly by increasing awareness of the phone numbers and addresses of the clinics and who to call to determine if emergency care is needed, they said.

``Out of the 130 people who attended our workshops, about 90 percent did not know that they could go to clinics in their neighborhood,'' Ramirez said. ``They only knew that they could go to Olive View.

Hospital administrator Melinda Anderson agreed that more widespread information about the neighborhood clinics is needed.

``We're keying in on it now to make people know we've got facilities in the Valley,'' she said.

She added that of the 85,000 patients who visit Olive View annually, about 60 percent are not ``true emergencies,'' and they could instead be seen by clinics.

Anderson told the group of about 170 people Thursday night that the average wait time in the emergency room has been cut in half. The average waiting time was 10 hours in 1994. This year, it is 4.6 hours.

But she acknowledged that waiting times need to be reduced even further - to an average of about three hours.

The hospital also is trying to hire a triage nurse to assess the level of needs in the emergency room, Anderson said.

Patients and their families have said there is much room for improvement.

``There's not one person who has gone to O.V. that hasn't had a story to tell about the wait time,'' said Dean Lopez, in an interview. Lopez has taken her aunts to the hospital emergency room. One aunt who suffers heart problems waited several hours a few months ago.

``When they called her number, No. 38, my aunt fainted right there,'' Lopez recalled. ``But they attended to her beautifully.''

VOICE members were pleased with the results of Thursday's meeting and agreed to meet again with the administrator in July.

``We certainly raised community awareness so that they can do something to change the situation at Olive View,'' Ramirez said.