How CHA HPMC is Helping Support the Needs of its Community

Marcel Loh shares how he hoped the construction of the new patient tower and expansion of services at CHA Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center will help the community.

Marcel Loh has experience as a leader in a variety of healthcare settings, including military healthcare, rural healthcare, for-profit healthcare, non-profit healthcare, and secular religious healthcare. His journey started in the U.S. Army, where he served as an officer in the Medical Service Corps.

He now serves as president and CEO of CHA Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center (CHA HPMC), joining the organization in October.

"I've got a broad base of experience, which I think serves to bring some value to my current role here at Hollywood Presbyterian. This is an opportunity for me to bring all that skill to a large urban center, inner city hospital that serves unique needs of various constituents across Los Angeles," Loh said during an interview with HealthLeaders. "I'm happy to be a part of that process, because it's given me a new look on life for what it really is to meet the challenges of an inner city hospital, and the unique needs of the community here."

Loh spoke with HealthLeaders during his first month with CHA HPMC, where he detailed how the pandemic is affecting the organization, the hospitals' expansion including the construction of a new patient tower, and the strategies he's looking forward to implement in 2021.

This transcript has been edited for clarity and brevity.

HL: What strategies have CHA HPMC implemented due to the pandemic?

Loh: One is the daily safety briefing where we have all our leadership team meet for approximately 30 minutes, where we review what has gone on in the last 24 hours. We look at all the clinical units, we also look at all the work support departments and see if there's anything we need to improve upon. That gives us that opportunity to elevate the attention to our COVID precautions and how we talk about communicating to our broader community about what precautions they should instill in themselves.

California has done a decent job with face masks, but we can always do better. We're trying to [educate] the community on the importance of wearing a face mask at all times to help protect themselves.

We're looking at our stockage inventory and our supplies to make sure that we have the right par levels, to anticipate any spike that we may start to see. We're working with other hospital agencies, whether it be the Hospital Association of Southern California, the American Hospital Association, or others, to help us anticipate what some of those needs and trends may look like.

HL: CHA HPMC broke ground for its new patient tower in May 2018. The tower is slated to open in 2021. Can you talk about the strategy behind the expansion and how it's going?

Loh: The pandemic did cause some delays in the construction schedule, which we kind of expected, but we are still on target for completion around third quarter or so of 2021. So, it slid a little bit, but we're happy with where we are given the circumstances.

When this tower is completed, it'll be one of the most modern hospitals in Los Angeles, and that in itself, is exciting. We're looking at how does this support the growth of our programs that we're looking for. Women's programs are an important part of what we want to do, as [well as] expanding our bed capacity so that we have more private rooms for our patients in our community.

When you have an exciting project it's also a great stimulus for interest in recruiting. Physicians want to be part of new plans that they can participate in. We're also looking at some areas of growth in our ICU, and our emergency room.

We were able to recruit a world class physician to lead our Eye Institute in 2018. His name is Dr. Rohit Varma. He's a well-known researcher, physician, specializing in eyecare and cutting-edge therapies, and we're starting to see some significant growth there. [The opthamology section] will be a comprehensive service line that'll support the needs of our community.

HL: What initiatives are you looking forward to implementing in 2021?

Loh: I'm focused on how [to] grow and build our service lines. Part of what I would like to do with the new tower, once it's completed, is looking at a comprehensive strategic plan to determine what the entire medical center plan [will] look like.

But the other thing we need to do is assess the needs of the community, especially the unmet needs, and how we can accommodate our growth programs to [help] those needs.

Physician recruiting is an important component of what we're doing, and we have developed a medical foundation that we feel is going to be the conduit for us to recruit and retain physicians in our community. We’re building upon some of our national recognition and we feel that that can be a platform for us to enhance other services.

HL: What are you most excited about with your new role?

Loh: One of the things that I'm starting to appreciate is that Hollywood Presbyterian is part of CHA Healthcare Systems, which has a global presence. I'm excited to not only learn best practices of what we can learn from the U.S. healthcare system, at Hollywood Presbyterian, but think about the opportunities we have to learn about what global best practices we can apply here. Having that kind of network of international relationships is an asset.

I've always prided myself that I always try to find people that are smarter than I am to help enhance and make a better decision-making process. So, I love the diversity of Hollywood Presbyterian, and the opportunities I see. We could be one of the top medical centers here in Los Angeles, and that's part of my goal.