San Diego, California – In a troubling signal of the financial pressures mounting across the healthcare industry, two of San Diego’s largest health systems have announced a combined total of more than 500 job cuts in the past week. On Monday, Sharp HealthCare said it would lay off 315 employees, citing increasing labor costs, state-mandated expenses, and lagging reimbursement rates from both public and private payers.
The announcement follows a similar decision by UC San Diego Health, which last week revealed it was cutting 230 positions across its hospitals and clinics — both systems citing unsustainable financial stress as the root cause.
While Sharp emphasized that the reductions represent only about 1.5% of its total workforce, the implications extend far beyond the numbers. With an annual revenue of $1.9 billion but expenses exceeding $2 billion in 2023, the organization, according to tax data collected by ProPublica, is operating on increasingly narrow margins. Its total liabilities last year approached $4.87 billion. These cuts, though aimed at administrative and non-patient-facing roles, reflect a deeper anxiety about the long-term viability of even well-established health systems in California…