This article discusses the major medical centers in the U.S. For all hospitals, see List of hospitals in the United States. For a general discussion about U.S. health care see Health care in the United States. Medical centers in the United States are conglomerations of health care facilities including hospitals and research facilities that also either include or are closely affiliated with a medical school.
Although the term medical center is sometimes loosely used to refer to any concentration of health care providers including local clinics and individual hospital buildings, the term academic medical center more specifically refers to larger facilities or groups of facilities that include a full spectrum of health services, medical education, and medical research.
The major medical centers represent the premier sites of health care in the United States. They vary greatly in their organization, the services they provide, and their ownership and operation.
Overview In the United States, ownership of the health care system is mainly in private hands, though federal, state, county, and city governments also own certain facilities. Many major hospitals, generally the backbone of any medical center, are non-profit and many of these have their origins in religious organizations. Despite their non-profit status, affiliation with private ventures and major medical schools often allows them to maintain state-of-the-art facilities and services. The non-profit hospital's share of total hospital capacity has remained relatively stable (about 70%) for decades. There are also privately owned for-profit hospitals as well as government hospitals in some locations, mainly owned by county and city governments.
Major medical centers provide many specialized services, some even containing multiple specialized hospitals and clinics each dedicated to specific types of patients and/or services. Additionally, they are centers of medical education, centers of medical research, and incubators for medical innovation and technology. A given medical center may include a medical school in the same complex as the rest of the facilities or may be closely affiliated with a medical school on a nearby campus. Similarly, a given medical school may be closely associated with multiple tightly linked hospital campuses which function to some degree as a unit though the group may not be referred to as a single medical center (e.g. the Harvard Medical School network of teaching hospitals).
There are about 1,100 teaching hospitals in the United States. Approximately 375 of the larger institutions belong to the Association of American Medical Colleges’ Council of Teaching Hospitals and Health Systems (COTH). COTH teaching hospitals train about 75 percent of residents yearly and provide more than 40 percent of all hospital charity care in the nation.
Major medical centers
Although any rankings of medical centers are highly subjective, this section describes some of the largest and most prominent centers in the nation. Note that the rankings and importance of individual hospital facilities may be different from the medical centers that they belong to.
Alabama UAB Health System The UAB Health System (UABHS) is a partnership between UAB and the University of Alabama Health Services Foundation (UAHSF), a private not-for-profit medical practice made up of the faculty of the UAB School of Medicine. UABHS is governed by a board of directors which has representatives of UAHSF, the University of Alabama Board of Trustees, and UAB administrators. The UAB president is the ex officio chairperson of the UAB Health System. The CEO of the UABHS reports directly to the UAB Health System board and is appointed by the chairman of the board.
UAB Hospital is the central institution of UABHS. It was formed as University Hospital in 1945 from the merger of Jefferson Hospital and Hillman Hospital, two private hospitals in the Southside of Birmingham acquired by the University of Alabama Board of Trustees. University Hospital was created to serve as the primary teaching hospital for the School of Medicine.
The other major institutions of UABHS include: The Kirklin Clinic of UAB Hospital, an outpatient clinic of UAB Hospital Callahan Eye Foundation, founded independently as the Eye Foundation Hospital in 1963 and merged into UABHS in 1973, UAB Medicine Women and Infants Center UAB Hospital-Highlands. Formerly HealthSouth's flagship medical center in the Southside, UABHS acquired it in 2006. Highlands now serves as an acute care hospital. In 2011, Highlands was merged completely into UAB Hospital. Spain Rehabilitation Center UAB Medicine Health Centers, clinics operated and staffed by UABHS located throughout central Alabama Viva Health, a health maintenance organization (HMO) which is a subsidiary of Triton Health Systems, a limited liability corporation based in Birmingham and owned by the UABHS
In addition UABHS manages, but does not operate, Medical West in Bessemer and Baptist Health in Montgomery. UABHS also has affiliations with the Birmingham VA Medical Center, Children's Hospital of Alabama, and Huntsville Hospital in Huntsville.
Arizona Phoenix Healthcare Cluster The Phoenix area is home to a large medical cluster of major hospitals, research institutes and medical centers all located within 2.5 miles of each other in Downtown Phoenix. This includes (2018 Funding from the National Institutes of Health): the internationally renowned Barrow Neurological Institute, Dignity Health St. Joseph's Hospital and Medical Center ($5.2 million), Phoenix Children's Hospital ($673,000), the Phoenix Bioscience Core campus (which includes the renowned Translational Genomics Institute ($1.0 million) and the branch of the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases), The University of Arizona College of Medicine - Phoenix (see above), Banner University Medical Center - Phoenix ($10.0 million), Phoenix VA Healthcare System, and a new Creighton University Health Sciences Campus that will offer 4-year medical degrees. Mayo Clinic - Phoenix, which ranked among the top 20 hospitals nationally, is located 10 miles to the northeast in North Phoenix and received $14.3 million in NIH funding in 2018. Mayo Clinic is developing the Discovery Oasis, 228 acres surrounding its 225-acre existing campus. Overall, institutions in Phoenix received $90 million in funding from the NIH to carry out research and studies.
California Cedars-Sinai Medical Center Cedars-Sinai Medical Center is a leading non-profit, tertiary, 886-bed hospital and multispecialty academic health science center located in Los Angeles, California. The medical center also conducts breakthrough biomedical research with currently over 500 clinical trials and 900 research projects underway.
As of 2022–23, U.S. News & World Report ranked Cedars-Sinai the best hospital in California and the western United States. It ranked as the 2nd-best hospital in the entire United States (only behind Mayo Clinic) and was placed nationally in 11 adult medical specialties and rated high performing in 10 adult procedures and conditions. Cedars-Sinai is a teaching hospital affiliate of David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), which was ranked #19 on the U.S. News 2022-23 Best Medical Schools: Research.
UCLA Medical Center The Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center is a hospital located on the campus of the University of California, Los Angeles in Los Angeles, California. UCLA Medical Center has research centers covering nearly all major specialties of medicine as well as dentistry and ophthalmology, and is the primary teaching hospital for the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. The hospital's emergency department is certified as a level I trauma center for adults and pediatrics.
In 2022–23, it was rated as the 2nd best hospital in California by the US News and the 5th best in the United States."2022-23 Best Hospitals Honor Roll and Overview" U.S. News & World Report (July 26, 2022)
UCSF Medical Center The UCSF Medical Center is a teaching hospital that also conducts biomedical research which is located in San Francisco, California. It is the 3rd-best hospital in the state of California (standing behind Cedars-Sinai Medical Center and UCLA Medical Center), and 12th best hospital in the US as per 2022-23 U.S. News & World Report ratings.
Colorado
Anschutz Medical Campus
The University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus is the academic health sciences campus in Aurora, Colorado that houses the University of Colorado's six health sciences-related schools and colleges, including the University of Colorado School of Medicine, the CU Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, the CU College of Nursing, the University of Colorado School of Dental Medicine, and the Colorado School of Public Health, as well as the graduate school for various fields in the biological and biomedical sciences. The campus also includes the Fitzsimons Innovation Community, UCHealth University of Colorado Hospital, Children's Hospital Colorado, the Rocky Mountain Regional Veterans Affairs hospital, and a residential/retail town center known as 21 Fitzsimons.
Florida
Lake Nona Medical City is a 650-acre (260 ha) health and life sciences park in Orlando, Florida, United States. It is located near Orlando International Airport and within the master-planned community of Lake Nona. The city is home to the University of Central Florida's Health Sciences Campus, which includes the university's College of Medicine and Burnett School of Biomedical Sciences. In the future, the campus will also house UCF's University of Central Florida College of Nursing, the University of Central Florida College of Dental Medicine, and a teaching hospital.
The medical city also includes the Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute, Nemours Children's Hospital, a University of Florida Academic and Research Center, and Valencia College at Lake Nona. In addition, the Orlando Veterans Administration Medical Center, began seeing clinical patients from February 2015.
Georgia Emory University Medical Center Emory University Hospital is a 733-bed facility in Atlanta, Georgia, specializing in the care of acutely ill adults. Emory University Hospital is staffed exclusively by Emory University School of Medicine faculty who also are members of The Emory Clinic. The hospital is renowned as one of the nation's leaders in cardiology and cardiac surgery, oncology, transplantation, ophthalmology, and the neurosciences.
The Children's Healthcare of Atlanta - Egleston Hospital is a nationally ranked, freestanding, 295-bed, pediatric acute care children's hospital located in downtown Atlanta, Georgia adjacent to Emory University. It is affiliated with the Emory University School of Medicine and is a member of the Children's Healthcare of Atlanta system, 1 of 3 of the children's hospitals in the system. The hospital provides comprehensive pediatric specialties and subspecialties to infants, children, teens, and young adults aged 0–21 throughout the Atlanta region. The hospital features an ACS verified level I pediatric trauma center, the only in the state. Its regional pediatric intensive-care unit and neonatal intensive care units serve the region. The hospital also has a rooftop helipad for critical pediatric transport.
Illinois