Children's Healthcare Of California history

1987 - The ECMO (Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation) program accepts its first patients, offering heart-lung bypass support to infants in respiratory failure.

1989 - Children’s Hospital is named among the top four pediatric facilities in the country in the first United States News & World Report “America’s Best Hospitals” survey.

1990 - Physicians pioneer the development of limb implants to treat bone cancer, saving young patients from amputation or death.

Patients received cared in this facility until 1991, when CHOC opened a six-story, 192-bed hospital today known as the CHOC North Tower.

1992 - A 110,000-square-foot outpatient tower opens on the south side of the Children’s Hospital campus, allowing for expansion of needed clinic space.

1993 - Surgeons perform three firsts for Children’s Hospital Los Angeles: a pediatric heart transplant, a pediatric lung transplant and, in worldwide first, a double-lobe lung transplant, using a lung lobe from each of the patient’s parents.

1995 - Researchers at Children’s Hospital discover the key role that transcription factor TTF-1 plays in the formation of the embryonic lung, a major advancement in the quest to grow or regenerate organs for repair or transplant.

1996: Valley Children’s NICU opens at Adventist Health in Hanford.

1997 - Physicians collaborate on a clinical trial using gene therapy for the first time on a child with HIV-1 infection, resulting in the world’s first gene therapy treatment for children with the disease.

1998 - Surgeons perform the hospital’s first liver transplant, and in that same year, its first living donor liver transplant.

1999 - Helinet Aviation provides a $2 million Sikorsky S-76A helicopter to be used exclusively by the hospital’s Emergency Transport Program, ensuring 24-hour helicopter services at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles.

2000 - Identical twins suffering from hemophagocytic lymphohistiocytosis, a rare blood disease, are the first to receive a bone marrow transplant from the same donor.

2001 - Children’s Hospital Los Angeles celebrates its Centennial with a full year of activities.

2002: Valley Children’s Olivewood Specialty Care Center in Modesto opens.

2003 - The Saban Research Institute opens; both the Institute and the 88,500-square-foot Saban Research Building are named with a transformative $40 million gift from Cheryl Saban, PhD, and Haim Saban, among the largest individual donors in the hospital’s history.

2004 - Surgeons perform the hospital’s first small bowel transplant.

2005 - A groundbreaking ceremony is held to celebrate construction of a new $636 million Marion and John E. Anderson Pavilion, to be built next to Children’s Hospital.

2006 - Eight local high school students are the first to participate in LA-HIP (Latino and African American High School Internship Program), opening more opportunities in research to minorities.

2007 - The Vision Center, an international center for children with complex eye diseases, opens.

2008: Valley Children’s becomes a Magnet Nursing hospital for a second time (hospitals may apply for redesignation every four years). Valley Children’s Hospital becomes the first hospital in the state to offer private rooms in our neonatal intensive care unit (NICU).

2009 - Children’s Hospital creates the Center for Personalized Medicine, which coordinates, supports and expands basic and translational research in genomics, proteomics, bioinformatics, molecular genetics, molecular microbiology and cytogenetics.

2010 - Children’s Hospital’s 460,000-square-foot Marion and John E. Anderson Pavilion is completed.

On July 17, 2011, Children’s Hospital Los Angeles officially opens the 317-bed Marion and John E. Anderson Pavilion.

2012 – Children’s Hospital completes the Living Proof campaign, the most successful fundraising effort in the hospital’s history.

Opened in spring 2013, the seven-story facility was designed to make CHOC one of the safest, most advanced children’s hospitals in the world.

2014 – The hospital continues its streak, ranking among the top five children’s hospitals in the country for the third year in a row, and is again the only hospital on the West Coast to make United States News and World Report’s Honor Roll of children’s hospitals.

2015 – For the seventh straight year, Children’s Hospital Los Angeles is ranked among the top 10 children’s hospitals in the nation on United States News & World Report’s prestigious honor roll of children’s hospital.

2016: The Rady Pediatric Genomics and Systems Medicine Institute at Rady Children’s is renamed the Rady Children’s Institute for Genomic Medicine.

2017 – CHLA is again ranked among the top 10 children’s hospitals in the nation, gaining one spot at No.

Rady Children’s Institute for Genomic Medicine sequences more than 1,000 genomes. (July 20, 2018)

2019 – CHLA jumps one spot to No.

2020 - CHLA is again ranked the No.

2021 - For the third straight year, CHLA is ranked the No.