Santa Clara Valley Medical Center treated more trauma patients than any other hospital in the state last year amid a 35% spike from the previous year.

The medical center in San Jose recorded 5,196 trauma cases in 2024, making it the only hospital in the state to treat over 4,000 trauma patients last year, according to new data from California’s Emergency Medical Services Authority.

The county-owned hospital, which is is one of two Level 1 trauma centers in Santa Clara County that provides care to the most critical patients, had previously ranked third overall the two years prior. The hospital is also the only dual trauma center and certified burn center in the Bay Area, and one of three between Los Angeles and the Oregon state line.

The other Level 1 trauma center in Santa Clara County, Stanford Hospital, had the sixth highest trauma volume in the state last year with 3,291 patients.

County officials attribute the surge at Valley Medical Center to the seven-month closure of the trauma center at Regional Medical Center, the East San Jose hospital that had previously treated about a quarter of all trauma cases in the county.

Dr. Adella Garland, Valley Medical Center’s trauma medical director, who has worked at the hospital since 1999, said the hospital had roughly a 4% to 8% annual increase in trauma cases.

“This uptick (last year) definitely had to do with the abrupt closure of a trauma center in our county,” she said.

HCA Healthcare, one of the largest for-profit hospital chains in the nation, announced in early 2024 that it would close Regional Medical Center’s Level II trauma center later that year. It led to a more-than-year-long battle to preserve critical life-saving care on the East Side that ended with Santa Clara County purchasing the hospital from the health care giant for $150 million. The county took over operations and reopened the trauma center in April.

“There is a population in East San Jose who needs not only trauma services but other critical medical services, and they need to be able to get to a hospital,” Garland said of Regional Medical Center. “A lot of a neighbors in the East Side, it can take hours on a bus to get to us.”

Of the seven Bay Area trauma centers included in the data, only two hospitals in addition to Valley Medical had an increase in trauma patients from 2023 to 2024. Stanford saw a 4.5% increase, while John Muir Medical Center in Walnut Creek saw a 2.3% uptick.

Regional Medical Center, with the partial year closure of its trauma center, saw the sharpest decline with 49% fewer trauma cases in 2024 than the year prior. Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital and Highland Hospital in Oakland — the remaining Level I trauma centers in the Bay Area — saw a 14.2% and 4.8% decrease, respectively.

Meanwhile, Santa Clara County is bracing for $4.4 billion in lost revenue through the 2029-2030 fiscal year due to federal cuts — largely to Medicaid, which will disproportionately impact the health care system as the program makes up more than 50% of the system’s revenues. The county will be asking voters in November to approve a five-eights-of-a-cent sales tax increase to help backfill some of the lost dollars.

“Santa Clara Valley Healthcare is the backbone of safety net and emergency care for our community, providing critical, high-quality care at moments of tremendous crisis and need,” County Executive James Williams said in a statement. “As a Level 1 Trauma Center, Valley Medical Center plays an essential role in providing life-saving care to everyone in our community. The need for accessible, readily available trauma services is more important than ever.”

Garland told the Bay Area News Group that Valley Medical Center’s trauma volume has started to fall slightly since the county purchased Regional Medical Center, but not quite to the numbers it saw in 2023.

“This hospital has been here since the 1880s in some form or another and the county facilities that we know for 175 years. It’s just such an important part of the Valley,” she said. “It is uniquely focused on really bringing a high-quality of care for both emergency services and elective medical services to this Valley. I would consider it unmatched.”