UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital, Children’s Hospital Oakland Complete Affiliation

UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital and Children’s Hospital & Research Center Oakland (Children’s Oakland) have affiliated, building on the hospitals’ mutual commitment to provide outstanding care to children in local communities, and advance medical discovery and treatment for the world.

The affiliation, effective January 1, 2014, brings together two leading Bay Area children’s hospitals, strengthening their abilities to meet marketplace expectations, including the Affordable Care Act. The affiliation has the potential to provide better health care value to consumers through higher quality care, lower costs and more coordinated access to services at hospital locations on both sides of the Bay, as well as medical facilities throughout Northern California.

“This partnership between two world-class children’s hospitals promises to elevate the health of all children, especially our most vulnerable patients,” said Mark Laret, CEO of UCSF Medical Center and UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital. “Both institutions have a longstanding commitment to public service, and by working together we are better able to deliver on that commitment.”

The affiliation allows children and their families to have access to what is now the largest network of children’s medical providers in Northern California, including a coordinated network of high-quality pediatric care from the Oregon border to San Luis Obispo, and as far east as Reno. 

Patients can access more than 800 pediatricians and pediatric specialists delivering specialized care daily at UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital and Children’s Oakland, as well as hundreds of community-based pediatricians affiliated with the two hospitals who provide pediatric diagnostic services and specialty care. The two hospitals jointly offer more than 65 different pediatric medical specialties and subspecialties including transplant, sickle cell, orthopedics, neurology, cardiology, thalassemia, pediatric rehab, and asthma and diabetes care.

“The synergies created by these two respected institutions coming together allows children and families to benefit from greater depth and breadth of pediatric expertise as well as innovation that is possible by working together,” said Bert Lubin, MD, CEO of Children’s Oakland.

“The affiliation of these two well-regarded children’s hospitals is good news for children and their families,” said Diana S. Dooley, secretary of the California Health and Human Services Agency. “Together, they will serve children throughout Northern California who need the state-of-the-art care they can provide.”

Dooley also previously served as president and chief executive officer of the California Children’s Hospital Association, which advocates for children’s health on behalf of the eight, non-profit regional children’s hospitals in California.

While Children’s Oakland will remain separately licensed and retain its own board of directors and separate medical staff, the hospitals will collaborate and share best practices for the delivery of the highest quality pediatric care.

Individually, the two hospitals are highly regarded nationally as well as internationally, each having made significant advancements in developing new treatments and achieving better health outcomes for children. Together, they are positioned to become the most comprehensive providers of pediatric care and strengthen their national leadership in pediatric education and research, and advocacy. Combined, the hospitals will be among the top ten largest children’s health care providers in the country when the new UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital opens in February 2015.

The affiliation positions the hospitals to:

• integrate research activities to build on the strengths of each institution;
• provide leadership in adopting, measuring and publishing quality and patient safety best practice indicators related to pediatric care;
• retain and attract outstanding faculty, physicians and staff; and
• improve the combined financial operating performance of both Children’s Oakland and UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital to support state-of-the-art equipment purchases, facility expansion and upgrades, and seismic compliance.

As of September 2013, the hospitals also jointly operate the Bay Children’s Physicians medical foundation and intend to broaden this foundation’s network and activities to include more Bay Area physicians. The expanded medical foundation will offer a wide range of practice options to physicians providing primary and specialty care for children.

UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital and Children’s Oakland have worked together for decades. Both have leading pediatric residency programs, a number of unique pediatric subspecialty fellowship programs, a research base for the next generation of discoveries, and expertise in pediatric clinical care.

UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital is the only California state-designated children’s medical center in San Francisco. The hospital is one of the leading children's hospitals in the nation, according to U.S. News & World Report. Its expertise covers virtually all pediatric conditions, including cancer, heart disease, neurological disorders, organ transplants and orthopedics as well as the care of critically ill newborns.

The hospital is part of UC San Francisco, whose School of Medicine leads schools nationally in grants from the National Institutes of Health. UCSF Medical Center and UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital are involved in more than 400 research protocols led by more than 500 investigators researching cures for hundreds of pediatric and adult diseases.

Children’s Oakland is one of only two solely designated California Level One pediatric trauma centers in the region, sees more than 45,000 Emergency Department visits per year, and has one of largest pediatric intensive care units in Northern California.

The hospital has a large, 250,000 visit per year, outpatient and preventative medicine program and has the only pediatric hospital-based Federally Qualified Health Center in California, providing outpatient care to underserved children in much of Northern California.

The hospital’s research arm, Children’s Hospital Oakland Research Institute (CHORI), is internationally known for its basic and clinical research, and is ranked among the nation’s top ten research centers for National Institutes of Health funding to independent children’s hospitals.  Children’s Oakland trains 90 pediatric residents and 23 pediatric subspecialty fellows and educates numerous health care professionals annually.

UCSF is a leading university dedicated to promoting health worldwide through advanced biomedical research, graduate-level education in the life sciences and health professions, and excellence in patient care. It includes top-ranked graduate schools of dentistry, medicine, nursing and pharmacy, a graduate division with nationally renowned programs in basic biomedical, translational and population sciences, as well as a preeminent biomedical research enterprise and two top-ranked hospitals, UCSF Medical Center and UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital.