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Welcome to Pacific Hospital of Long Beach


Pacific Hospital of Long Beach is a full-service, for-profit, teaching hospital with 184 licensed acute care beds. We are fully accredited and have all the innovative technology that is expected of a medical center but with an important difference.

Our environment is small enough to assure patients of calm, homelike surroundings while providing a capable, professional staff. The result is a perfect blend of sensitivity and technology.

In need of assistance? Call us at (562) 997-2000.

What Our Patients Think of Us...  See What Our Patients Think of Us...

VISITING RESTRICTIONS AT PHLB

Stop! Visiting Restrictions at PHLB.Why? Pacific Hospital of Long Beach is taking a proactive, measured approach to dealing with the H1N1 flu alert.

One visitor per patient

This is being done for the protection of your health
and that of PHLB staff.



RESPIRATORY ILLNESSES LIKE THE FLU SPREAD EASILY

Read carefully please!


If the answer to all of these questions
is yes, please follow the
instruction given.

  1. You may not be allowed into the hospital or
  2. You will be required to wear a face mask
    during visitation
  3. Wash your hands frequently or use the hand gel dispenser

BREAST CANCER AWARENESS MONTH SPECIAL

Breast Cancer Awareness Month Special for Mamos!
In celebration of Breast Cancer Awareness Month, for the month of October, mammogram screening/reads at PHLB for employees, friends and family are JUST $55!

Prescriptions are required.




RAPID DETOX FOR PRESCRIPTION DRUG ADDICTION

Michael Lowenstein MDPrescription drug abuse has led to unprecedented numbers of people becoming addicted. Pain killers and opiods are among the most abused drugs. Recently  I had the opportunity to sit down with Dr. Michael Lowenstein, Co-Director of the Waismann Institute in Los Angeles to discuss his approach to opiod detox.

Question:  Dr Lowenstein, what is rapid detox and how is it different from traditional detox methods?

Rapid detox or Accelerated Neuro-Regulation (ANR) is based on a method  of treatment developed in Israel by Dr. André Waismann.  In 1982, Dr. Waismann was completing his military service in the Israeli army and witnessed first hand how many wounded soldiers became dependent on pain killing drugs leading to narcotic addiction.

Traditionally, opiate dependency has been treated as a psychological disorder. Society  told patients that they were “drug addicts” because they had an incurable personality disorder or a spiritual deficiency.  We believe that opiate dependence is chemical imbalance in the brain that requires medical treatment.

Question:  How does rapid detox work?

Our method of rapid detox is only performed in an Intensive Care Unit in a accredited full service hospital.  For each patient we develop a detoxification plan.  The patient is admitted to the hospital 24 to 48 hours before the procedure.  Once the procedure is complete,  the patient is kept in the ICU for another 24 hours.  Our fully trained staff continuously monitors  the patient to ensure heart rate, blood pressure and other physical changes remain at a healthy and expected level.

The procedure itself is only performed by Board Certified Anesthesiologists in the intensive care unit of an accredited hospital. Currently the procedure is only performed at Pacific Hospital of Long Beach a full-service teaching hospital.

Question:  What makes rapid detox a better choice for opiate addiction than a traditional detox program?

We believe that this procedure is far more humane. Conventional detoxification procedures require the patient to suffer through a debilitating and painful withdrawal. Success rates for traditional detox programs are quite low. One year following detoxification, the vast majority of patients have relapsed.

Another problem is that traditional treatments often are opiate-replacement therapies. Many use Methadone which is itself a synthetic narcotic. Withdrawal from methadone is slow. As a result many patients require continuous treatment, sometimes over a period of years. We believe that this is simply substituting one addiction for another.

Question:  You call the Waismann Method rapid detox. How quickly does it work?

A person addicted to opiods damage the very basic and delicate system of natural balance of narcotic-like substances produced by our own brain. Those substances regulates our pain, our fluid, our sleeping patterns, blood pressure and other important functions  The normal withdrawal syndrome can last 3 to 4 weeks.

Our procedure induces a sedated state and speeds up the withdrawal in a matter of hours, pushing all the opiates out of the brain with a blocking agent called an antagonist. Patients are able to get through a withdrawal successfully while sedated, without unnecessary suffering. This is why the procedure must be done by a qualified anesthesiologist in an appropriate hospital setting.

Question:   You mentioned that the success rate for most detox program is very low. What is the success rate for person undergoing your procedure?

I believe the success rate of most programs is in the 15 -20% range. Over the last 11 years,  our success rate is about 75%.

Rapid Detox for Prescription Drug Addiction Read the full article at examiner.com

CNN: "UNSUNG HEROES WORK HARD TO CUT HOSPITAL-AQUIRED INFECTIONS"

By David S. Martin
CNN Senior Medical Producer

(CNN) -- For years, Alfonso Torress-Cook followed the rules in his quest to eliminate hospital-acquired infections. Patients at his hospital received large doses of antibiotics and were scrubbed down with alcohol-based soaps, as he and his colleagues aimed to kill every bacterium possible. Search and destroy was the mantra.

By upending conventional wisdom, Alfonso Torress-Cook was able to slash hospital-acquired infection rates.By upending conventional wisdom, Alfonso Torress-Cook
was able to slash hospital-acquired infection rates.

Still, patients became sick with bacterial infections after checking in. Some died.

"I never saw anything change. I saw things getting worse," Torress-Cook said.

Torress-Cook eventually joined Pacific Hospital of Long Beach, in California, where as director of epidemiology and patient safety, he changed the rules and slashed the number of patients who become infected.

Torress-Cook is part of a growing movement in medicine that no longer accepts hospital-acquired infections as inevitable complications. Every year, such infections sicken 1.7 million and kill 99,000 people in the United States.

At Pacific Hospital, Torress-Cook doesn't go after all bacteria, just the dangerous ones.

The staff members at the 184-bed hospital use antibiotics sparingly, feed patients yogurt to replenish healthy bacteria in the gut and bathe patients daily, using a soap that maintains the natural pH of the patient's skin, killing only bacteria that don't belong there.

Dr. Torres-Cook Meet some of the people fighting hospital-acquired infections

Torress-Cook is also obsessive about hygiene: Nurses clean under patients' fingernails and brush their teeth daily. He also enlisted the hospital's cleaning crew as part of the infection-fighting team. Rooms receive a thorough cleaning every day -- more than simply emptying the trash and mopping the floor, he says.

Under Torress-Cook, Pacific Hospital's infection rate for the so-called superbug MRSA is down to 0.01 per 1,000 discharges, 430 times better than the national average.

Approximately one out of every 22 patients who checks into a U.S. hospital acquires a bacterial infection, adding more than $28 billion to health care costs, according to a 2009 report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

CNN: "Unsung heroes work hard to cut hospital-acquired infections" Read the full article at CNN.com

HOSPITAL COMPARE

The Hospital Compare website was created through the efforts of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), an agency of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), along with the Hospital Quality Alliance (HQA). The HQA is a public-private collaboration established to promote reporting on hospital quality of care. The HQA consists of organizations that represent consumers, hospitals, doctors and nurses, employers, accrediting organizations, and Federal agencies. The information on this website can be used by any adult needing hospital care.

Hospital Compare displays rates for Process of Care measures that show how often hospitals provide some of the care that is recommended for patients being treated for a heart attack, heart failure or pneumonia, or patients having surgery. Hospitals voluntarily submit data from their medical records about the treatments their adult patients receive for these conditions, including patients with Medicare and those who do not have Medicare.


AT PACIFIC HOSPITAL OF LONG BEACH WE'RE PROUD OF...

Our Results From The Survey of Patients About Their Hospital Experiences  Our Results From The Survey of Patients About Their Hospital Experiences


Our Surgical Care Improvement / Surgical Infection Prevention Scores  Our Surgical Care Improvement / Surgical Infection Prevention Scores


Our Heart Failure Scores  Our Heart Failure Scores


Our Pneumonia Scores  Our Pneumonia Scores