This article has been revised and corrected from the original version.
USC Arcadia Hospital, formerly Methodist Hospital of Southern California in Arcadia, announced on June 27 that it received a $7.5 million gift from businessman, financier and Arcadia resident Charles Huang for a new operating room.
The donation is the largest single gift in the hospital’s 119-year history. The hospital was founded in downtown Los Angeles in 1903 by the Women’s Home Missionary Society of the Southern California Conference of the Methodist Church. The current Arcadia hospital campus opened in 1957.
Huang’s donation will go toward the construction of a high-tech operating room that can accommodate sophisticated equipment used to conduct advanced surgical procedures, especially cardiac surgery.
“The gift is very unexpected and very much appreciated,” Dan Ausman, USC Arcadia Hospital’s chief executive, said in the announcement. The donation, he said, “will push us to the boundaries of our clinical expertise (and) it will raise the competency of our clinicians.”
The advanced cardiac surgical procedures able to be conducted in the new operating room will save even more lives, he added.
A native of China, Huang had a distinguished career as a stock market analyst and dealmaker, shepherding more than 20 initial public offerings for Asian and other global companies. He was a pioneer in equity research in Chinese companies for James Capel, which is now HSBC Securities.
In 2016, Huang founded Pasadena-based private equity firm Pasaca Capital Inc., where he currently serves as board chairman.
Two years ago, he established the Charles Huang Foundation with a mission to bolster, enable, and inspire global development in education, health and innovation. Through the foundation, Huang has made substantial donations to his alma maters, including the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, Scotland and, last year, a $40 million gift to Wuhan University in Wuhan, China. Most recently, Huang donated $7 million to San Francisco’s Chinese Hospital.
Huang, who has lived in Arcadia for the past 20 years, decided to make his most recent donation to an institution in his own back yard. Two of his children were born at the hospital, as was his first grandchild.
“I’ve always been impressed with the level of care and services at Methodist Hospital for both my family and several of our employees,” Huang said in the gift announcement. “It’s important for everyone to support local organizations like Methodist Hospital that do so much for our community. We want to do all in our power to help expand needed health care services at the local level.”
