What Makes Academic Medical Center Hospitals Different?

The Corridor is fortunate to have very high quality health care services and fine community hospitals.  We all share the commitment to provide excellent patient care services and constantly strive to improve the health of Iowans.  I am often asked, however, what makes an academic medical center hospital like University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics different from other hospitals.  It is a great question that gets to the heart of why academic medicine is vitally important to society as a whole.

Nationally, some 400 teaching hospitals and 125 accredited medical schools, including UI Hospitals and Clinics and its partner, the UI Roy J. and Lucille A. Carver College of Medicine, fall under the academic medical center umbrella.

As an academic medical center hospital, UI Hospitals and Clinics provides a unique environment where new and innovative ideas flourish as teams of physicians, researchers, nurses, therapists, technologists, and other health care professionals take a multidisciplinary approach to the most complex diseases, illnesses and injuries, make discoveries and share knowledge. 

The discovery and dissemination of knowledge and new technology comes only in an environment where there is a desire to continually question the status quo, find innovative ways to learn more about diseases and apply that knowledge to the care of patients.  As a result, academic medical center hospitals often support unique or highly specialized technologies, modalities and sub-specialty services, such as organ transplantation, burn care services, pediatric sub-specialties and Level 1 trauma center services.

This compassionate commitment to specialty and sub-specialty care is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week.  Academic medical centers also serve as a health care safety net to ensure care is provided even to those without the financial means.

While extremely important, multidisciplinary patient care is only one-third of the equation.  Academic medical center hospitals and their affiliated health science colleges lead the quest to alleviate human suffering through biomedical research, and ensure a promising future by training the next generation of health professionals.

A research enterprise requires an enormous investment in people, infrastructure, equipment, technology and programs.  In return, research conducted in academic medical centers has advanced our understanding of some of today’s most vexing health conditions, including cancer, stroke, children’s illnesses, cardiovascular disease and Alzheimer’s.  For patients and families, the research commitment provides added value at the bedside – from having access to the newest and most innovative approaches to patient care, to invitations to participate in groundbreaking clinical trials.

The graduate medical education component of academic medicine is equally important.  In fact, academic teaching hospitals like UI Hospitals and Clinics are uniquely endowed with the technologies, infrastructure and expertise needed to turn today’s medical school graduates into tomorrow’s trusted doctors – both primary care physicians and specialists.

The total impact of academic medicine extends well beyond these core missions.  For instance, a study by the Association of American Medical Colleges documented the significant financial contributions of the association’s member institutions in their regions and the nation as a whole.  Although these institutions are generally not-for-profit, medical schools and teaching hospitals produced a total of $14.7 billion in state government revenues in 2002, the study said.

Other major findings included the fact that these institutions had a combined economic impact of more than $326 billion and employed one out of every 54 wage earners in the U.S. labor force.

For these reasons and many more, academic medical centers stand at the forefront of society’s relentless quest to improve human health.  Through world-class patient care, graduate medical education and biomedical research, academic medical centers make our communities, our state, our nation and our world a stronger and better place to live.