Barry Arbuckle recalls the early days of the COVID-19 vaccine rollout, when MemorialCare focused on giving the shots to the most vulnerable in Laguna Woods.
The elderly were so desperate to get the shots that they were waiting outside in the rain to get them, the CEO of MemorialCare said.
“I went to my Home Depot and bought 30 big umbrellas that would get two or three people under and we just start to give them away not caring if we ever saw them again,” Arbuckle told the Business Journal.
MemorialCare, which has about 5,800 employees in Orange County, has given away far more than just umbrellas. In 2022, the healthcare system donated more than $223,421 and made more than $130,086 in in-kind donations across Orange County to organizations including the OC Rescue Mission, Meals on Wheels, Boys & Girls Club and the Vietnamese American Cancer Foundation.
$200M+ in Services
Those figures tell only part of the story of MemorialCare, one of the companies selected for this week’s Companies That Care list, the centerpiece of this week’s Business Journal print edition.
In the fall alone, Fountain Valley-based MemorialCare said it provided over $222 million in community benefit to the residents in and organizations serving Los Angeles and Orange counties, with services including financial assistance, community health improvement services, research and subsidized health services, including COVID-19 vaccinations for the most vulnerable members.
“In the past three years, a lot of our efforts [were] around the pandemic,” Arbuckle said.
Arbuckle spoke at a press conference where he announced a new venture with Irvine’s Pacific Dental Services, where the two companies will put dental offices in ambulatory centers (see story, page 1).
MemorialCare ranks No. 11 among OC’s largest employers, with nearly 6,000 local workers. Alongside numerous urgent care, clinics and other facilities, it runs two of the 10 largest hospitals in the county, MemorialCare Saddleback Medical Center in Laguna Hills, and MemorialCare Orange Medical Center in Fountain Valley.
