Clinical Care
January 02, 2020

150 years of Michigan Medicine: Three in one — How academic medical centers came to be

No institution had combined patient care with medical education and research before the University of Michigan

The first university-owned hospital in the nation started in the converted house at the right of this image, and was enlarged a few years later to include the wooden "pavilions" seen at left

The first university-owned hospital in the nation started in the converted house at the right of this image, and was enlarged a few years later to include the wooden "pavilions," seen at left

Today, we take them for granted. Huge university medical centers, filled with patients who travel miles to receive care that’s available nowhere else, from teams of highly specialized clinicians.

Nearby, research laboratories yield new discoveries about the human body and everything that can go wrong with it — or heal it.

Classrooms hum with the questions and answers of students training for a health or science profession.

These three-in-one institutions are citadels of curiosity and the cutting edge. But where did the idea for the academic medical center come from?

Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Read more about 150 years of Michigan Medicine — including the birth of the academic medical center right here in Ann Arbor — in the Michigan Medicine Newsroom.

Three in one — How academic medical centers came to be (link is external)