UCSD Medical Center in Hillcrest is the 381-bed academic teaching hospital of the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine, housing San Diego and Imperial County's only academic Level I Trauma Center established in 1976. Surgical specialty privileges on the Hillcrest campus extend to independent groups including Pacific Coast Surgical Group, whose surgeons operate in the hospital's main OR suites for general and subspecialty operative cases. The facility also houses the San Diego Regional Burn Center — the only burn unit serving San Diego County, Camp Pendleton, and Imperial Valley since 1973 — along with a Comprehensive Stroke Center, Hyperbaric Medicine Center, and the Owen Clinic for HIV care. Inpatient and trauma imaging — stroke protocol MRI, interventional radiology, and 360-slice CT adjacent to the emergency department — runs through UCSD Medical Center Radiology as the on-site academic imaging department supporting every service line in the tower. The campus also serves as headquarters for the California Poison Control System's San Diego division and houses the regional HIV/AIDS Treatment Center and Surgical Intensive Care Unit. The most complex workflows here are multidisciplinary trauma activations for gunshot, motor vehicle crash, and burn cases, where trauma surgery, emergency medicine, anesthesia, orthopedics, and neurosurgery converge in a dedicated resuscitation bay with instant x-ray, point-of-care labs, and direct OR transfer within minutes of patient arrival.