Establishing a profitable outpatient community nursing center.

In 1983, the newly implemented prospective payment system reduced the length of hospital stays, thereby curtailing many of the services that patients traditionally received. The Division of Nursing at Memorial Medical Center of Long Beach, California identified many patient needs that were no longer being addressed during the inhospital stay and began looking for a way for nurses to meet these needs on an outpatient basis. The result was the formation of Memorial Medical Center's Community Nursing Center.