California's eight regional, private non-profit Children's Hospitals are legally defined in the California Welfare & Institutions Code Section 10727. These hospitals treat children with the most serious and life-threatening diseases such as leukemia and other cancers, heart complications, sickle cell anemia, diabetes, HIV, and cystic fibrosis. Children's Hospitals provide multi-disciplinary health care to children from all counties in the State as well as essential 24-hour care and services such as trauma, burn, neonatal intensive care (NICU) and pediatric intensive care (PICU) services.

• These Children's Hospitals serves as important pediatric medical research centers and are training the next generation of pediatric specialists. Children's Hospitals provide graduate medical training for nearly 700 full-time residents, over 300 of whom are in pediatric subspecialties

• The Children's Hospitals employ more than 15,000 regular, full-time employees, not including physicians, consultants and other contracted staff who are critically important in taking care of the state's sickest and most vulnerable children.

• The Children's Hospitals provide almost 40% of all inpatient care for children in California.

• On average, half of the children treated at Children's Hospitals are enrolled in the State's Medi-Cal program to receive the highly specialized inpatient and outpatient services these hospitals provide. In some of the Children's Hospitals, the Medi-Cal caseload is consistently over 70 percent. However, only 20 percent of the State’s Medi-Cal budget is devoted to the care of children.

• The California Children's Services (CCS) program serve the sickest children in California and 60 percent of the total Medi-Cal days are for CCS children. While these children are enrolled in Medi-Cal managed care plans for primary care, many CCS services are provided at regional specialty care centers. Of the 422 special care centers throughout California, more than half (222) are located at Children's Hospitals (both regional non-profit Children's Hospitals and University of California Children's Hospitals combined). Children receive care at these special care centers from a multi-disciplinary team of specialists.

• The eight private, Children's Hospitals care for hundreds of thousands of children each year in an inpatient setting providing:
• 72% of the inpatient care for children who need heart surgery
• 60% of all surgery for children who need organ transplants
• More than 55% of the inpatient care for children with cancer
• 55-60% of inpatients are CCS children with serious illnesses

• These Children's Hospitals provide over 1.5 million outpatient visits each year. Of this number, over 700,000 (50 percent) are for Medi-Cal children.

• Managed care plans often refer the sickest children, whose treatments are complex and expensive, to Children's Hospitals. Complex pediatric surgical cases can cost five to six times more per day than an average case at a community hospital.

• Overall, Children's Hospitals receive 42 percent of all pediatric transfers in the State. Children's Hospitals get 10 times the number of neonate transfers (children under the age of 29 days) because they are equipped and trained to handle seriously ill and injured children.

• Children's Hospitals provide the most intensive levels of pediatric care in the State; over 55 percent of the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU) beds are located in a California's Hospital.

• Children's Hospitals provide care to the State's sickest children which is very resource-intensive. Children's Hospitals average case-mix (which measures resource intensity) is more than 25 percent higher than that of other hospitals that treat children.