Nearly half of IE hospitals lost money last quarter — and the biggest ones lost the most
The most recent hospital financials California has published — covering October through December 2025 — show 14 of the IE's highest-Medi-Cal hospitals running a median loss margin of nearly 17%. Patient payer mix, more than size or ownership, is what separates the hospitals making money from the ones bleeding it.
Two Murrieta-area hospitals are training their own cardiologists because the region can't recruit enough
Citrus Belt Review: Southwest Riverside County now has two competing cardiac programs three miles apart, run on opposite ownership models — and both have responded to the same problem the same way: by building cardiology fellowships to grow the specialists the market can't hire. The contest isn't really for patients. It's for doctors.
The national nurse-shortage panic doesn't fit the Inland Empire's RN forecast
Citrus Belt Review: A national study showing RN turnover nearly doubled has the healthcare feed talking shortage again. The IE's bedside-nurse forecast doesn't read that way — but its behavioral-health staffing does, and worse than almost anywhere in the state.
Kaiser's $1B strike bill lands on Fontana, Riverside, and Ontario
Citrus Belt Review: Kaiser Permanente put the cost of its winter nurses strike above $1 billion. That number is system-wide, but the walkout was heavily an Inland Empire event — and the settlement that ended it reset wage floors for thousands of local healthcare workers at three of the region's busiest hospitals.
The IE's in-demand jobs are the ones short-term Pell was built to screen out
Citrus Belt Review: Starting July 1, federal Pell grants extend for the first time to short-term job training — but only for programs whose graduates land "above the poverty line in an in-demand career." Statewide, that gate is meant to weed out low-wage truck-driving and nursing-assistant mills. In the Inland Empire, those are the in-demand jobs.