[1] It opened in 1995 replacing the historic 1942 Richmond Field Hospital that serviced Liberty shipyard workers and thus gave birth to the HMO.

[2][6] It was built with a fully operational intensive care unit that has never been opened or used in addition to several other inactive pavilions.

[6] Advances in surgical techniques and medical practices in addition to cost cutting efficiency measures led to a dramatic decrease in hospitalizations in the 1990s from what had been forecast for the campus.

[11] Richmond Medical Center has Benefits Advocacy and Social Services departments to assist those with the state funded Medi-Cal health plan.

The medical center has a teen clinic where adolescents may attend without the accompaniment or consent of an adult and without going to Pediatrics; it has a focus on sexual health and substance use.

That unit works with the chemical dependency department which provides health care for those with addictions and recreational use of various narcotics such as alcohol, marijuana, prescription abuse, crack cocaine, and others.

Toddlers are taken to the Early Start unit which provides motor skills and cognitive development and disease screening and offers classes for parents.

In April 1997 the hospital was chastised by federal investigators from the United States Health Care Financing Administration for several patient deaths and dangerous understaffing, among a 104 total violations.

[11][14][15] In fact the California Nurses Association had already reported repeatedly and to no avail that the hospitals were understaffed especially for critical care positions.

[7] Richmond Medical Center was also censured for sending patients to other hospitals via their own cars and not ambulances, even if they were alone and in labor, as a common practice.

[15] Further violations for the hospital that were described by investigators and itself as "deficient" including poor recordkeeping, no standardized nor documented procedures, and understaffing of nurses in the emergency department.

[16] In May 1997 the hospital and the health care organization were able to convince the government to reverse the decision after launching remediation actions at Kaiser Richmond and its mother campus in Oakland.