UCI Health Irvine Acute Care Hospital

UCI Health opened the nation’s first all-electric acute care hospital in Irvine in December 2025, the capstone of a $1.3 billion medical campus at the edge of the San Joaquin Marsh. The seven-story, 350,000-square-foot hospital runs entirely on electricity, with no on-site fossil-fuel combustion for heating or hot water, a first for a full-service California hospital that has to meet the state’s strict seismic and life-safety codes. It gives University of California, Irvine its first hospital of its own in the fast-growing southern half of Orange County.

Project Scope
The 144-bed hospital sits alongside a separate ambulatory care building and cancer center, part of a campus that also includes an advanced care center and outpatient surgery. Hensel Phelps built the hospital as part of a design-build team with CO Architects, with WSP handling engineering. An all-electric design meant rethinking central plant equipment that hospitals normally run on natural gas, from sterilization to kitchen operations. A 52-bed rehabilitation facility on the campus is set to follow in 2026. Construction on the hospital alone ran about $770 million.

Why It Matters
Hospitals are among the hardest buildings to decarbonize because they run around the clock and depend on steady heat, steam, and hot water. Pulling that off in a California acute care facility, where regulators demand buildings stay standing and operating after a major quake, shows the all-electric approach can clear the toughest bar. For Orange County, the campus expands specialty and cancer care in a region UCI Health had served mostly through clinics and its older Orange hospital. It also gives the university a teaching site built for the next generation of clinicians. The project points toward a model other health systems are watching as states tighten building-emissions rules.

Project Team & Details