NASHVILLE, Tenn. / Mar 28, 2024 / Business Wire / HCA Healthcare, Inc. (NYSE:HCA), one of the nation’s leading healthcare providers, today announced the release of its annual Impact Report that reflects on the past year and highlights HCA Healthcare’s positive impact across the communities it serves.

“At HCA Healthcare, our purpose is clear: We exist to give people a healthier tomorrow,” said Sam Hazen, CEO of HCA Healthcare. “We focus our strategy, resources, and systems on ensuring we deliver the quality care patients deserve. This work, and all our accomplishments this year, would not be possible without our dedicated colleagues. I’m continually impressed by the depth of talent and knowledge we have as an organization.”

The HCA Healthcare Impact Report highlights significant efforts of the organization in enhancing care experiences, caring for its colleagues and giving back to the communities it serves. For additional details on these areas, please visit HCAhealthcareImpact.com to learn more.

Enhancing care experiences

Delivering safe, high-quality care during its more than 43 million annual patient encounters is HCA Healthcare’s top priority. Last year, 32 HCA Healthcare hospitals were recognized on the Fortune/PINC AI 100 Top Hospitals list, and in early 2024, 54 HCA Healthcare hospitals were included on Healthgrades’ 250 Best Hospitals list for clinical excellence.

HCA Healthcare has continued to integrate healthcare technology through strategic collaborations to help deliver high-quality patient care. In August 2023, HCA Healthcare and Google Cloud announced a collaboration to use generative AI to assist care teams with time-consuming tasks like documentation. HCA Healthcare has also developed a scheduling and staffing solution for nurses, which is currently in operation at nine HCA Healthcare facilities, with an additional 21 hospitals scheduled for deployment in early 2024. Additionally, the company is implementing a new electronic health record (EHR) system to help create efficiencies for care teams, improve coordination of care for patients and power innovation. The company’s department of Care Transformation and Innovation (CT&I) continues to work closely with highly engaged clinicians to refine tools like these and to expand the use of technology throughout the organization.

At HCA Healthcare, research helps unlock insights to real-world data and treatments to advance patient care. The HCA Healthcare Research Institute, the organization's multispecialty clinical research arm, expanded support to 36 HCA Healthcare hospitals and participated in more than 300 industry-sponsored studies in 2023.

In 2023, HCA Healthcare provided the delivery of charity care, uninsured discounts and other uncompensated care at an estimated cost of approximately $3.7 billion.

Caring for colleagues

In 2023, HCA Healthcare recruited more than 116,500 colleagues, including 37,500 bedside nurses. To support nurses, HCA Healthcare invested in roles to help support nursing workload, including licensed practical nurses (LPNs), licensed vocational nurses (LVNs), nurse externs, paramedics and patient care technicians (PCTs).

Recognizing nurses are the heart of HCA Healthcare, the company announced more than $300 million in investments to support the education and training of nurses through the opening of new HCA Healthcare Centers for Clinical Advancement and the expansion of Galen College of Nursing. Since joining HCA Healthcare, Galen has opened 14 new campuses nationwide.

HCA Healthcare was founded by physicians with the intent of creating an environment where healthcare can flourish. By prioritizing physician input, clinical capabilities, growth and innovation, HCA Healthcare strives to enable its more than 45,000 active and affiliated physicians to focus more on what they do best: caring for patients. On July 1, 2023, HCA Healthcare, one of the leading sponsors of Graduate Medical Education (GME) programs in the U.S., welcomed over 2,000 new residents and fellows to its GME programs.

To support the health and well-being of colleagues, HCA Healthcare provides a variety of programs, resources and opportunities including free counseling sessions and webinars through Optum, the Nurse Care helpline and student loan and tuition assistance programs. In 2023, HCA Healthcare provided approximately $37.5 million through its tuition assistance program.

The HCA Healthcare Hope Fund, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit run by colleagues, for colleagues, recently surpassed $100 million in grants, helping more than 52,000 families since its inception in 2005. Over $11.4 million in assistance was distributed in 2023 to more than 3,800 HCA Healthcare colleagues and families.

Across HCA Healthcare, it is a priority to foster an equitable and inclusive environment for colleagues by leveraging educational programs, strengthening partnerships with community organizations and implementing new initiatives. For these efforts, HCA Healthcare was recognized for the second year in a row as a “Best Place to Work for Disability Inclusion” by the American Association of People with Disabilities (AAPD) and Disability:IN, receiving a top score on the 2023 Disability Equality Index.

In early 2024, Ethisphere recognized HCA Healthcare as one of the 2024 World’s Most Ethical Companies for the 14^th time for the organization’s commitment to business integrity through robust ethics, compliance and governance programs.

Giving back to communities

HCA Healthcare embraces its responsibility to help support a significant portion of the local economies where its colleagues live and serve. In 2023, HCA Healthcare and the HCA Healthcare Foundation gave more than $43 million to community organizations across the nation. Additionally, HCA Healthcare colleagues logged more than 180,000 volunteer hours and $16.9 million in giving with HCA Healthcare matching.

In 2023, the HCA Healthcare Foundation invested over $12.2 million through grants to 234 agencies and nonprofit organizations through its Middle Tennessee and Healthier Tomorrow Funds. The Healthier Tomorrow Fund, a community impact fund focused on addressing high-priority community needs and advancing health equity, also announced a new Health Equity Catalyst Grant Program, intended to provide operational support to organizations addressing health inequities in a defined focus area to fight food insecurity.

The HCA Healthcare Foundation strengthened its support of Girl Scouts of the USA and helped to launch a new series of Mental Wellness Patch Programs to help address mental wellness among girls in 4^th through 12^th grade. To date, more than 7,000 girls have earned their Mental Wellness patch since the program’s launch.

As part of its commitment to invest $10 million over three years in partnerships with Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) and Hispanic Serving Institutions (HSIs) to help create opportunities for future healthcare leaders, HCA Healthcare announced a gift of $620,000 to the University of California, Riverside (UCR) to support five scholarships for students enrolled in the UCR School of Medicine. HCA Healthcare has now announced approximately $7.42 million towards this commitment.

For the fifth year, HCA Healthcare supported the American Red Cross through its Annual Disaster Giving Program (ADGP) to help provide funding for strong infrastructure, trained volunteers, innovative technology and critical resources necessary to respond to a disaster. During many disasters, HCA Healthcare works alongside the Red Cross in real-time to coordinate supplies and resources, support shelters and match patients with community shelters when discharged from the hospital. During Hurricane Idalia, HCA Healthcare’s Enterprise Emergency Operations Center (EEOC) provided more than 1,200 staff hours of support, 16 electrical generators and more than 18,000 gallons of diesel fuel to its impacted hospitals to help them continue to provide care.

For more information about the annual HCA Healthcare Impact Report, visit HCAhealthcareImpact.com.

About HCA Healthcare

Nashville-based HCA Healthcare is one of the nation’s leading providers of healthcare services comprising 186 hospitals and approximately 2,400 ambulatory sites of care, including surgery centers, freestanding ERs, urgent care centers, and physician clinics, in 20 states and the United Kingdom. With its founding in 1968, HCA Healthcare created a new model for hospital care in the United States, using combined resources to strengthen hospitals, deliver patient-focused care and improve the practice of medicine. HCA Healthcare has conducted a number of clinical studies, including one that demonstrated that full-term delivery is healthier than early elective delivery of babies and another that identified a clinical protocol that can reduce bloodstream infections in ICU patients by 44%. HCA Healthcare is a learning health system that uses its more than 43 million annual patient encounters to advance science, improve patient care and save lives.

All references to “Company,” “HCA” and “HCA Healthcare” as used throughout this document refer to HCA Healthcare, Inc. and its affiliates.