A look inside America’s first all-electric acute care hospital

Fast Company this week took a deep dive into UCI Health — Irvine (Calif.), which the health system describes as “the nation’s first all-electric powered acute care hospital.”

Officially opened last month, UCI Health — Irvine is a seven-story, 350,000-square-foot, 144-bed facility. It completes the construction of a $1.3 billion medical campus for UCI Health, joining the Joe C. Wen & Family Center for Advanced Care and the Chao Family Comprehensive Cancer Center and Ambulatory Care, both of which opened in 2024.

UCI Health describes the hospital’s combined inpatient-outpatient perioperative suite as “a garden-level surgical floor, the size of three football fields, with 10 large high-tech operating suites.”

Among the services that the new hospital is providing are cancer, cardiology, digestive health, neurology, orthopedics and spine, along with a 24-hour emergency department with 20 treatment rooms. The hospital is also the new home for Orange County’s first inpatient bone marrow transplant and cellular therapy program.

In addition to being an all-electric acute care hospital, UCI Health says the facility is on track to be the nation’s sixth hospital to be certified LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Platinum, the highest level of certification for “exceptional sustainability performance, energy and water efficiency leadership, waste reduction and indoor environmental quality.”

“The one thing it doesn’t have is a gas line,” writes Fast Company, which focuses on the facility’s power infrastructure. Read its full profile here.