Children's Hospital Los Angeles receives anonymous $20 million donation

LOS ANGELES (KABC) -- An anonymous person donated $20 million to Children's Hospital Los Angeles to renovate its emergency department.

The gift is one of the largest donations in the hospital's history. The money will go toward an expansion of the waiting room, 11 additional patient bays (increasing patient capacity by 30 percent), high-tech cardiopulmonary monitors, electronic medical record monitors and remodeling nursing stations to enhance team-based care, the hospital said.

The emergency department is the largest and the busiest department for children in Los Angeles County, hospital officials said. CHLA's emergency center sees nearly 90,000 pediatric patient visits annually.

"We are filled with gratitude by the generosity of this transformative gift," said CHLA President and CEO Paul S. Viviano. "The emergency department at CHLA serves one of the largest and most diverse pediatric populations in the nation, and we believe that every child should have access to quality pediatric experts and expertise. With demand for services growing every year, we will be able to make needed enhancements to continue providing transformative, family-centered care for the children and families who depend on us."

The emergency department was opened in 2011 and was designed to handle 65,000 patient visits per year. Approximately 45 percent of the hospital's inpatients are admitted through the emergency department, so increasing capacity is critical to saving lives and the well-being of patients, hospital officials said.

The donation will also go toward the creation of a "Child Life" team, whose members are trained and certified to prepare and soothe young patients during difficult emergency procedures, guide clinicians on child-friendly care techniques and better communicate with anxious family members. Money from the donation will also go toward new magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) machine for high quality imaging, which will be utilized hospital wide, CHLA officials said.

Construction in the emergency department is slated to begin later this year. Administrators said the work will be done in phases to accommodate normal emergency department operations.