Clinical Sites & Our Patients

UCLA Santa Monica Medical Center is a 266-bed teaching community hospital with the latest in diagnostic and therapeutic technology. The Santa Monica community has a large socioeconomic divide between affluent patients and those experiencing homelessness, so residents learn to care for patients across the socioeconomic spectrum in one setting. Santa Monica is the home of our Hospitalist rotation where residents develop significant autonomy and get a look into the life of a community physician. Residents also rotate through Solid Oncology and through our Geriatrics service, consistently ranked as one of the top in the United States by U.S. News and World Report. Subspecialty consultations and outpatient experiences are available at this hospital as well. The Santa Monica rotations prepare residents to be autonomous community doctors.

West Los Angeles VA Medical Center

The West Los Angeles VA Medical Center, located in Westwood one mile from Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center, is one of the largest referral centers in the VA System. It provides both primary and tertiary care to Veterans and has a referral base throughout Southern California. The 262-bed facility is comprised of a medical and surgical intensive care unit, cardiac unit, general medicine ward, inpatient geriatric ward, acute inpatient rehabilitation ward, and an inpatient psychiatry ward. The West LA VA provides an invaluable experience to our residents where we have the honor of caring for a diverse population of Veterans who often otherwise lack access to care. In addition to the inpatient medicine rotations, the emergency department, medicine subspecialty, and primary care clinics are key components of our residents' rotation experience at the VA. All medical staff of the West LA VAMC have academic appointments at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and the hospital serves as a core teaching site for UCLA medical students. The hospital campus also includes the Community Living Center (an on-site skilled nursing facility for Veterans), the Domiciliary (residential substance use treatment), and the California State Veterans Home.

Olive View UCLA Medical Center

Olive View UCLA Medical Center is an academic county hospital located in the San Fernando Valley, approximately a 30-minute drive north of UCLA. We are fortunate to have a mutually beneficial partnership with the Olive View UCLA training program. Residents rotate here as interns on the medicine wards and most return as senior residents for another month. The county hospital experience is integral to our program as it provides a focus on the underserved and equips our residents with the skills to practice medicine in a resource-limited setting.

Outpatient Clinical Sites

Ambulatory training is a major cornerstone of our program. We firmly believe that to be a competent clinician one must have strong outpatient skills. Consistently, our graduating residents reflect back on their continuity clinic and feel it was one of the most rewarding experiences of their residency. Our ambulatory training consists of both private and free clinics, providing our residents opportunities to focus on cost-effective care.

Our continuity clinic sites for categorical residents are:

1. Internal Medicine Suite: A UCLA hospital-affiliated primary care site in Westwood
2. Simms Mann Health & Wellness Center (Venice Family Clinic): A busy clinic site serving low-income and uninsured patients in the West Los Angeles area
3. West Los Angeles VA or Sepulveda VA: An innovative, medical home model primary care clinic serving the Veteran population

Our primary care residents all have two continuity clinic sites (depending on the pathway, please see Primary Care Training for more details):

• Santa Monica (community-based primary care clinic) AND Olive View- UCLA Medical Center (LA County/Department of Health Services facility)

OR

• Santa Monica 16th St. Clinic (community-based primary care clinic) AND West Los Angeles VA Homeless Clinic (interprofessional medical home primary care model serving the Veteran population experiencing homelessness)"

UCLA Internal Medicine Suites

The Internal Medicine Suite (Suite 420) is located in the 200 Medical Plaza adjacent to the Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center. This is one of the locations of the outpatient continuity clinic for our categorical residents. Residents are assigned panels of patients from outgoing residents and have the opportunity to continue building their practice over the course of the three-year program. Together with their attending preceptors, clinic nurses, and patient service representatives, residents deliver comprehensive outpatient clinical care. In addition to their patient panel, residents also will see same-day urgent care patients from the community. 

Simms/Mann Health and Wellness Center

The Simms/Mann Health & Wellness Center is an outpatient facility that is run by the Venice Family Clinic, one of the largest federally qualified health centers in the country. This health center provides high quality primary, subspecialty, and multidisciplinary care to low income and uninsured patients on the west side of Los Angeles. Our UCLA residents staff this clinic Monday through Friday. Categorical residents interested in working with underserved populations can request their continuity clinic to be based at Simms/Mann. Residents with continuity clinics at IMS may also rotate through our Simms/Mann resident clinic to complement their clinical training experience.

VA Clinics - West Los Angeles and Sepulveda Ambulatory Care Center

The West Los Angeles VA is located just outside of Westwood while the Sepulveda campus is located in the San Fernando Valley, approximately 25 minutes north of Westwood. Residents at both sites will be fully integrated into Patient Aligned Care Teams (PACTs) allowing them the opportunity to train in a truly integrated medical home team of care providers. Together with their attending preceptor, each resident will manage a panel of patients and will work collaboratively with their team to deliver high quality care to ensure each patient attains their individual health care goals. With a fully integrated mental health service, on-site health coaches, pharmacists and social work services, residents are provided with the resources to take care of this unique and diverse population in a rewarding way. All residents will also rotate in Women's Health and select ambulatory medicine subspecialty clinics at the VA. 

Subspecialty Clinics

Our philosophy is centered on the principle that most of our residents' future practices (be it primary care or subspecialty medicine) will occur in the ambulatory setting. Therefore we focus most of our subspecialty rotations in the outpatient arena. Residents will attend subspecialty clinics at both our Westwood and Santa Monica practices. Residents will often see rare, complex, or refractory diseases at the Westwood clinics. Conversely, the Santa Monica and VA subspecialty clinics provide more of a typical community subspecialty practice experience. Each clinic week, residents will rotate through a variety of subspecialty clinics, including: cardiology/pre-op, endocrinology, gastroenterology, hematology-oncology, pulmonary medicine, and rheumatology. Outpatient exposure to these disciplines allows the housestaff to work closely with our outstanding faculty and provides exposure to the common diseases typically treated by these specialists. Additionally, junior and senior residents also have significant elective time to design a curriculum based on their career goals. UCLA offers a broad range of ambulatory electives including but not limited to women's health, addiction medicine, allergy-immunology, East-West medicine, radiology, dermatology, sports-medicine, student health, procedures, HIV, nuclear medicine, pathology, nutrition/obesity, and palliative care.

Our Patients

Our residents have the privilege of caring for patients across a spectrum of socioeconomic status, health insurance status, and racial/ethnic background. The patient population varies greatly between each training site.