OC Hospital Revenue Up 4.4% to $12.8 Billion

Orange County hospitals continued to make headlines in 2025.

Towards the end of the year, the region saw the opening of highly anticipated facilities, including a 144-bed, all-electric acute care hospital that opened in December within UCI Health’s $1.3 billion medical complex along Jamboree Road and Campus in Irvine.

No. 1-ranked UCI Health grew the most out of the 24 largest hospitals in Orange County, according to the Business Journal’s annual list, with revenue increasing 28% to $2.8 billion.

This growth was driven by the new hospital and the integration of the four community hospitals that the academic health system acquired from Tenet Healthcare Corp. for $975 million, officials said. The acquisition, announced in 2024, added 858 inpatient beds to UCI Health.

“We are so proud and delighted that the community hospital system has become part of UCI Health so smoothly,” Dr. Steve Goldstein, vice chancellor of health affairs, told the Business Journal. “Sometimes you have hiccups when you do things like that, and this has been hand in glove.”

In less than two years, UCI Health has expanded from one hospital with 459 beds to six hospitals with 1,461 beds, helping drive patient volumes, according to Director of Communications John Murray.

Other recent openings by UCI Health include an outpatient center in Brea, providing residents with access to ophthalmologists from UCI Health’s Gavin Herbert Eye Institute, and the Falling Leaves Foundation Medical Innovation Building, opened last May.

Rady Children’s Posts Second Biggest Growth

Collectively, the hospitals on the list reported $12.8 billion in revenue for the year ended Sept. 30, 2025, a 4.4% increase. Revenue data was based on a database from California’s Department of Health Care Access and Information.

From that same period, the hospitals reported a combined profit of $566 million, down from $924 million in the prior year. Outpatient visits increased by less than 1% to 3.6 million, compared with an 8% increase a year ago. Meanwhile, OC employment increased 4.4% to 61,277.

Rady Children’s Hospital Orange County, formerly Children’s Hospital of Orange County (CHOC), was the second biggest grower by percentage. Revenue jumped 21% to $1.3 billion, ranking the hospital third on the list.

Its sister entity, Rady Children’s Hospital at Mission, reported an 11% increase to $119.5 million.

“Generally, patient revenue increases year after year as parents and community physicians recognize the quality of care that CHOC, now part of Rady Children’s Health, provides,” Bill Rhode, Rady’s Orange County regional vice president and CFO, told the Business Journal.
He credited the hospital’s increase in high acuity cases to its clinical affiliations with UCI and UCLA.

Last June, Rady Children’s Hospital OC opened a $300 million outpatient and research tower housing more than 25 specialty clinics, an advanced imaging center and a research floor for clinical trials.

Since the opening, Rhode said that Rady has been expanding its hospital in Orange, building out emergency department capacity, refurbishing its small baby unit, and constructing a special delivery unit for fetal interventional procedures.

A current challenge facing the industry is revenue reductions driven by the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which was enacted last year, Rhode said.

The tax act’s changes to premium subsidies and Medicaid eligibility are projected to reduce net patient revenue by 2% to 10%, or as much as $68.5 billion, nationwide over the course of 2026 to 2027, according to data from Premier.

Other Notables

The four largest hospitals on the list saw increases in revenue. In total, eight hospitals had revenue increases while 16 experienced declines.

Hoag Memorial Hospital Presbyterian, No. 2 on the list, reported that sales grew 6.6% to $1.8 billion.

Newport Beach-based Hoag, which is spending $1.2 billion to expand in Irvine, this month received a $30 million gift from philanthropists Ron and Sandi Simon for workforce housing at the expanded campus, which is expected to fully open in September.

Meanwhile, Kaiser Permanente Orange County, which has two major medical centers in Anaheim and Irvine, saw revenue increase 1.3% to $1.3 billion, making it the fourth largest hospital in OC.

About 31,000 nurses and other healthcare professionals entered their third week of a strike taking place across California and Hawaii against the healthcare provider for unfair labor practices.

Research Director Desmond Celo contributed to this report.