Hoag Memorial Hospital Presbyterian’s $1.2 billion expansion of its Irvine campus is one step closer to being finished.
Newport Beach-based Hoag, the second-largest hospital in Orange County, held a topping off ceremony on June 6 for a 100,000-square-foot surgical pavilion set to be part of the Sun Family Campus, named after a $50 million gift that Hoag received from David and Diana Sun in 2022. Construction on the campus broke ground last July.
“The community support of Hoag’s expansion is tremendously meaningful to us,” Hoag Chief Financial Officer Andrew Guarni said during the ceremony.
The surgical pavilion is the first building, along with two already finished parking garages, to take shape in the complex located next to its current hospital and across the street from Hoag’s Health Center.
When completed, the Sun Family Campus will have six new buildings housing 155 inpatient beds, 11 operating rooms and 120,000 square feet of ambulatory facilities.
The expansion is supported by Hoag’s $300 million Boldly Hoag campaign, which launched in 2022 and has now raised $185 million to date. Funds from the campaign will mainly cover the cost of construction and equipment for the planned facilities.
Hoag expects the first phase of the expansion to be completed by July 2026.
Surgical Pavilion
The surgical pavilion will be the first building to open within the Sun Family Campus, according to Guarni.
“We’ll be able to do surgeries and have patients stay prior to the rest of the campus opening,” Guarni told the Business Journal.
It’s slated to have 24 intensive care unit patient rooms, 12 pre- and post-operative rooms, 12 post-anesthesia care unit bays, eight operating rooms and two procedure rooms.
The surgical pavilion will also have a hybrid operating room for cardiac cases and interventional radiology.
Hoag plans to begin hiring staff in early 2026 ahead of its opening with a “focus on demographics in the community,” according to Guarni. “We’re hiring doctors and nurses that are bilingual to make sure that we address that.”
Two acute care facilities, a women’s hospital and a cancer and digestive health hospital, are soon to follow the surgical pavilion on the north side of the campus, according to Guarni.
Hoag delivers around 180 babies per month and expects that number to increase to 400 after the new women’s hospital opens.
Hoag has 12 labor delivery and recovery beds at its current location and offers new mothers afternoon tea.
“It’s all about experience,” Guarni said.
Former Tenet Hospital
Hoag opened its current hospital in Irvine in 2010.
The building, formerly known as Irvine Regional Hospital, was owned by Dallas-based Tenet Healthcare Corp. before it terminated its lease in 2009, ending a nearly 20-year operation, and was taken over by Hoag.
Hoag reportedly invested $84 million to upgrade the Irvine facility prior to the 2010 opening of the acute care and orthopedic specialty hospital, which includes a five-story patient bed tower that adjoins the three-level central atrium.
“It’s been a real entry into this community,” Guarni said. “It has allowed us to build a better relationship here in Irvine.”
Kingston Co-Founder
David Sun is the co-founder and chief operating officer of Fountain Valley’s Kingston Technology Co., the second-largest private company based in Orange County with an estimated $15.6 billion in revenue in 2023.
The Suns grew up in Taiwan in the 1950s, then immigrated to America in 1977 as a young married couple and have since lived in Orange County for more than 40 years.
In 1999, they founded the Sun Family Foundation, which is primarily focused on providing educational opportunities for underserved youth inspired by David’s late mother, who was a biology teacher in Taichung, Taiwan.
The foundation has provided over 7,000 scholarships to elementary, high school, college and vocational students in Taiwan, according to its website.
“Growing up, they weren’t wealthy,” Dara Sun Mullarkey, daughter of David and Diana, told the Business Journal. “Even when they didn’t have enough, they’d give back in time.”
Mullarkey currently serves as the director of philanthropic values at the family’s foundation and was previously manager of strategic marketing at Kingston until 2014.
Du Family Pavilion
The Sun Family Campus will be built around the Du Family Hospital Pavilion, which is being funded by a recent $25 million donation from longtime supporters of Hoag Benjamin “Ben” Du, founder of industrial pump maker Flojet Corp., and his wife, Carmela Du.
The Du Family Hospital Pavilion will serve as the entrance point to Hoag’s expanded campus, according to hospital officials.
The couple believes the expansion will make the Irvine location “a lot more accessible” for patients seeking care.
Ben Du was among 150 people in attendance at last month’s topping off ceremony.
“We think this location will serve the majority of Orange County,” he told the Business Journal. “We really want to give back to the community and thought this was an ideal location for the project.”
The couple’s first major gift to Hoag in 2015 was $2.3 million to establish the Benjamin & Carmela Du Endowed Chair in Urologic Oncology, which supports breakthroughs in prostate cancer and treatment at Hoag.
In 2018, they donated $5 million, the largest gift to Hoag’s Irvine campus at the time, to create the Benjamin & Carmela Du Emergency Pavilion.
Robot-Assisted Surgery
Hoag Memorial Hospital Presbyterian is getting a helping hand from robots in the operating room.
The hospital has nine da Vinci Surgical Systems across its network, the second-most in the country, according to Chief Financial Officer Andrew Guarni.
Surgical robots are employed across several of Hoag’s departments, including its gynecology, cardiovascular and thoracic programs.
The surgical robots at Hoag have long, flexible arms that can turn 360 degrees, allowing surgeons to access difficult-to-reach areas in the body.
During a procedure, the robots cut smaller incisions than surgeons can with a scalpel, which reduces scarring and helps speed up recovery time.
“It’s significantly less invasive for the patient,” Guarni said.
Hoag in 2022 completed its 20,000th robot-assisted procedure and received a designation as a Center of Excellence in Robotic Surgery (COERS) from the Surgical Review Corp.
Hoag is currently having discussions regarding how many surgical robots it wants to add to the ICUs in the expanded six-building Sun Family Campus in Irvine.
—Yuika Yoshida
