It is currently ranked by U.S. News & World Report, as the best in California and the West Coast (tied with Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, also in Los Angeles).

[4] On June 29, 2008, the new Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center opened and became fully operational, replacing the older facilities across the street.

Patient beds in the intensive-care units will be accessible to nurses and physicians from 360 degrees, and surgical floor plans will be modular, allowing them to be expanded and reconfigured as medical technology evolves.

The hospital is sheathed with mechanically honed, cream-colored, horizontally grained travertine marble panels sold at below-market-rate cost by Carlo Marrioti, the owner of an Italian quarry whose cancer was cured at UCLA.

[7] The travertine elements were fastened to a sophisticated interlocking panelized aluminum cladding system developed by Benson Industries of Portland, Oregon.

The exterior architecture is very simple (as with many Becket designs), consisting of a red brick wall with horizontal bands of stainless-steel louvers over the windows to keep direct sunlight from heating the building.

[9] It is affiliated with the University of California, Los Angeles David Geffen School of Medicine, and is a member of UCLA Health.

[14] On June 25, 2009, American singer Michael Jackson died from acute propofol and benzodiazepine intoxication at his home.

[15] Conrad Murray, his personal physician, had given Jackson various medications to help him sleep at his rented mansion in Holmby Hills, Los Angeles.

[18] Resuscitation efforts continued en route to Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center, and for more than an hour after arriving there, but were unsuccessful,[19][20] and Jackson was pronounced dead at 2:26 pm Pacific time (21:26 UTC).

[52] The court decided that patient John Moore had no property rights in the immensely profitable "Mo" cell line which UCLA researchers had discovered when they removed his cancerous spleen.

The risk of infection via duodenoscope is very low as well, with procedures being performed on over 500,000 individuals between 2013 and 2014, and only 135 cases of CRE being reported as a result.