The efforts from Orange County’s healthcare sector over the past three years have not gone unnoticed by the region’s roster of benefactors.
The pandemic placed a significant strain across the county’s hospitals and research facilities, with healthcare workers scrambling to treat residents—both patients of COVID-19 and other illnesses—while investing in expansion and upgrade efforts to meet OC’s call for help.
Residents and corporations alike have stepped up to help the industry meet that call and pay it forward—literally.
In this year’s iteration of the Largest Charitable Gifts of 2022 in Orange County—which measures donations of larger than $1 million to Orange County recipients—healthcare organizations received nearly $305 million in total gifts, representing 65% of the total donations.
That healthcare total doesn’t include the University of California-Irvine, which received $103.4 million in 2022 gifts, some of which is expected to go toward the school’s healthcare arm, which has been ramping up its presence in recent years with several projects underway as part of the new $1.3 billion UCI Health-Irvine complex going up near the Irvine and Newport Beach city line.
“The pandemic has been a powerful reminder that hospitals and health systems are the ultimate safety net for saving lives, and philanthropic support is vital to continue that mission,” Flynn Andrizzi, president of the Hoag Hospital Foundation, the nonprofit arm of the Newport Beach hospital, told the Business Journal.
This year’s list shows 91 donations valued at $1 million or more that totaled nearly $472 million, a 20% increase from the year prior, and more than twice the 2020 total.
Burnand, Pt. 2
Topping this year’s list is a $106 million donation to Hoag Memorial Hospital Presbyterian from the estate of Audrey Steele Burnand, marking Hoag’s largest gift in its nearly 70-year history (see related story, page 1).
The funding deal, Orange County’s largest in five years, was announced in September.
Audrey Steele Burnand, who died in 2020 at age 98, is the daughter of transportation and manufacturing mogul Harry Steele.
It’s the second year in a row that Burnand has topped the Business Journal’s list.
Burnand was behind the largest donation made in 2021 when she gave $57.8 million to UCI to study depression.
In addition to topping the list, Hoag received the third-largest donation last year with a $50 million donation from the Sun Family Foundation. Funds are expected to go toward Hoag’s ongoing expansion, particularly at its Irvine campus.
Other notable healthcare donors in 2022 include the Argyros Family Foundation, featured twice on the list with a $25 million gift to City of Hope Orange County—ranking No. 5 among all gifts—and a $10 million gift to the CHOC Foundation, ranking No. 7.
Eight of the 10 largest gifts went to healthcare organizations, including Hoag, Providence St. Joseph Hospital Foundation, City of Hope, the CHOC Foundation and UCI Health (for more on these organizations, see pages 1, 13, 14 and 18).
Providence received the second-largest gift: a $53 million donation from an anonymous couple who received care from Providence St. Joseph Hospital, and were inspired by the hospital’s caregivers and physicians throughout the pandemic.
“Orange County is a tremendously generous community. Healthcare is a key priority for donors,” Providence Regional Chief Philanthropy Officer Kenya Beckmann told the Business Journal.
UCI Health
UCI is not to be forgotten as part of the larger healthcare sector, with major strides underway to expand its health system from Orange to Irvine.
Joe Wen, the founder of multinational conglomerate Formosa Ltd., is a notable example of individuals helping UCI Health meet that goal.
Wen and his family donated $25 million to UCI Health in June, marking the University’s second-largest gift in 2022, and its largest overall gift from a donor under the age of 50.
The money will support the construction of the Joe C. Wen & Family Center for Advanced Care at UCI Health-Irvine, an outpatient clinical facility at the UCI Health-Irvine complex.
The five-story facility, approved by the UC Board of Regents in 2020, will run 168,000 square feet along Jamboree Road. It will offer adult and pediatric specialty care, urgent care, digestive health neurosciences and comprehensive laboratory and radiology imaging services in one location, the university said.
The outpatient facility is part of the university’s multi-building medical complex underway on a nearly 25-acre site on the north end of the university’s campus.
The UCI Health-Irvine complex, with an estimated cost of $1.3 billion, will also include a 144-bed, 350,000-square-foot acute care hospital with an emergency room, a Center for Children’s Health and the Chao Family Comprehensive Cancer Center and Ambulatory Care building.
The health campus got another local investment boost from Michael Hayde and Laura Khouri, who gave $7.3 million to support the medical facility as well as the Susan Samueli Integrative Health Institute.
