Michigan Medicine History

After the University's initial founding in Detroit in 1817, the state approves its move to a plot of donated land in Ann Arbor. The first classes were held in 1841.

Prompted by a petition from local physicians, a report by Dr. Zina Pitcher recommending a Department of Medicine is accepted by the university. The initial approval allows for three faculty and $3,000 to build a medical building; these grow to five faculty and $10,000 by the time the department welcomes its first students. U-M is the first university to make its medical school a full part of the university, with physicians as faculty, and sets out to make the school “an example worthy of imitation.”

The “laboratory,” or medical building, is completed on the Diag, with a design modeled on a Greek temple. A five-member faculty in the fall welcomes 90 “matriculants” and 5 “honorary students” to a six-month series of lectures.

The Medical Department graduates its first six students, all of whom entered with advanced standing (having already served an apprenticeship to a practicing physician). For tuition of $5, they attended six months of lectures and clinical demonstrations led by faculty involving a patient from the local community.

In 1852, Henry Phillip Tappan, who had been professor of philosophy at New York University and had spent time in Europe, arrives in Ann Arbor with his family to become the University’s first president.

In 1854, Corydon L. Ford, a friend of fellow professor Moses Gunn from their days at Geneva Medical College in New York, is appointed professor of anatomy.

A Chemical Laboratory – the first building at any U.S. university devoted to chemistry – opens behind the Medical Building. Medical students, and other students, learned chemical analysis and preparation of medications, which many practicing physicians at the time had to do themselves.

Overcrowding and hygiene concerns make the expansion or replacement of the Medical building the university's "greatest immediate necessity.” A four-story addition to the original building opens in 1865, more than doubling its space, and adding a new space for anatomical dissection and two 600-seat theaters for lectures and clinical demonstrations. The addition was funded in part by donations from the citizens of the City of Ann Arbor.

The Medical School’s 525 students now make up a large part of U-M’s 1,255-member student body. About 300 patients a year turn to the medical faculty for care, staying in local rooming houses before having examinations or operations in front of watching students.

In 1869, after the state legislature approves funding, a professor’s house on North University Avenue is turned into a modest hospital of 20 beds for patients who are operated upon in the Medical Building. One of the first buildings built for U-M in Ann Arbor in 1840, it stood on the spot where the current Chemistry building stands.

The Medical School’s first female graduate, Amanda Sanford, receives her degree. She had entered a year before, when the Medical School became the first major school to accept women. The first full class of women medical students – 17 out of a student body of 315 -- is said to have “taken rank at once among the best students.”

In 1872, African-American student William Henry Fitzbutler is awarded his medical degree. Born the son of a slave, he had traveled to Canada with his family via the Underground Railroad. He will practice medicine for many years in Kentucky, eventually establishing the respected Louisville National Medical College and a hospital. One of the four ‘houses’ to which U-M medical students now belong is named for him.

In 1876, the hospital is expanded, and the first staff nurses are hired, followed by a matron and resident surgeon in 1877. All care is provided for free, though patients are charged for room and board. They stay for an average of three weeks each. The expansion, funded by $14,000 from the state and city, adds two 114-foot-long wooden pavilions to the hospital, extending from the south side of the first hospital.

While visiting Japanese medical student Saiske Tagai (sometimes spelled Tagei in historical documents) attended classes in 1872, the first student of Asian origin to graduate from the Medical School was Myatt Kyau, a member of the class of 1882. Kyau was from Burma and a member of the Karen ethnic group as well as the local Baptist congregation.

Sophia Bethena Jones, M.D., becomes the first African-American woman to graduate from the U-M Medical School. She came to Michigan from Canada, frustrated with the University of Toronto’s limited medical training program for women. After graduation, she became the first African-American to join the faculty of Spelman College, and established its nurse’s training program before going on to practice medicine in St. Louis, Philadelphia and Kansas City.

Only a few years after European scientists first demonstrate the role of microorganisms in human and animal disease, the Medical School began to lead the way on research and education on the nature of infections that killed many people in those days of poor sanitation, few vaccines and no antibiotics. A Hygienic Laboratory, established in late 1886 and moved into a new building shared with the Physics department in 1888, served the state by analyzing food and water for bacterial contamination, and allowing scientific investigation of public health outbreaks. It was the first building in the country where students could learn the new science of bacteriology in a systematic way.

By 1889, a new Anatomical Laboratory building opened, the first in the country to be used exclusively for instruction in human anatomy. It had a separate area for female medical students to dissect donated cadavers apart from their male peers, for propriety's sake. The expanded space for training allowed the school to extend the curriculum to four years in 1890, and to add courses on diseases of the nervous system and “insanity” for the first time.

John Jacob Abel joins the faculty at Michigan and is appointed America’s first professor of pharmacology. He begins without a laboratory and has to borrow even such simple equipment as test tubes, flasks and beakers.

In 1889, the Michigan legislature appropriated $50,000 for a new hospital, on the condition that the citizens of Ann Arbor contribute another $25,000. By 1891, two stone hospital buildings opened on Catherine Street – the eastern one with 65 beds for the main Medical School and the western one with 40 beds for the homeopathic school. They stood on the site where the Taubman Health Sciences Library and Medical Science II building entrances stand today. All patients received care for free from the 27 Medical School professors and the staff. Also in 1891, the first six nursing students were admitted to the two-year program of the new U-M Training School for Nurses.

In 1892, two young Chinese women arrived to begin their medical studies. They used English names, and wore Western clothing during their time in medical school: Shi Meiyu became Mary Stone and Kang Cheng became Ida Kahn. But at their graduation ceremony in 1896, they wore traditional Chinese attire, to symbolize their commitment to return to China and blend the medical cultures of the two nations. They were among the first women physicians in China, and both went on to direct hospitals in major cities. Also in 1892, the first clinical pharmacist is hired for the university's hospitals. In addition to being in charge of preparing medicines, James Perry Briggs, Ph.C., was responsible for preparing instruments and sutures for surgical teams, and took the first X-rays.

Alice Hamilton, who will become the first woman on the Harvard faculty and who will help define the field of industrial medicine, receives her medical degree from Michigan.

In 1899, George Dock introduces the clinical clerkship for medical students, which becomes a model for other medical schools across the country. The approach changes the role of the student from passive observer to active participant in the learning process. Also this year, the first hospital laundry opens.

With the move of the controversial Homeopathic Hospital out of one of the Catherine St. buildings, the medical campus began a period of rapid expansion that soon made it the nation's largest teaching hospital. The two hospital buildings became the Medical and Surgical wards, with porches added overlooking the street where patients could "take the air." In between rose the Palmer Ward for children's care, and behind, a Contagious Ward, heating plant and more.

A new Medical School building rises just west of the original, greatly expanding room for lectures, laboratory learning and museum collections used in medical education – and the nation's first Department of Bacteriology. The building remained in use for medical education until the 1950s, and is now home to U-M's School for Environment and Sustainability.

In 1902, Frederick Novy, an organic chemist, becomes head of the Bacteriology Department.

In 1903, the Palmer Ward for children opens as part of the Catherine Street hospital complex, one of the first such hospitals in the nation. It also contained the first radiology (then known as Roentgenology) facility for medical imaging.

In 1905, David Murray Cowie (MD 1896) is selected by George Dock, professor of internal medicine, to teach pediatrics when it becomes a permanent course, partly because of his special interests in gastroenterology and infectious diseases.

In 1906, through a partnership between the state of Michigan and the Medical School, the first Psychopathic Hospital opens on Catherine Street. Rather than a long-term warehouse-style asylum for people with mental and neurological conditions, its 41 beds offered definitive diagnosis and treatment, and a new era in mental health care, research and training. Leading these efforts were the faculty of the Department of Psychiatry, one of the nation's first.

The city service that later became Michigan Visiting Nurses launched in 1909 to serve the needs of U-M patients as they returned home. Beginning in 1911, a nurse-anesthetist leads the training of medical and nursing student in anesthesia. The Training School for Nurses, opened in 1891, formally became part of the hospital in 1912. Also in this time period, the hospital begins a formal program for medical interns, recent medical school graduates receiving additional training.

Although U-M had devoted a small house to the care of patients with infectious diseases since 1897, a smallpox surge in Ann Arbor in 1908 spurred the city's voters to authorize money for a modern new 24-bed facility. With separate entrances for each patient room off a wraparound porch and central hall, and other 'aseptic' provisions, the building made it possible to care for patients without spreading infection to others.

An overhaul of the University's approach to naming its units based on whether they granted undergraduate or professional degrees leads to the formal establishment of the Medical School – formerly the Department of Medicine and Surgery.

Max Peet, a general surgeon, returns to Michigan where he will eventually specialize in neurosurgery. His operation for hypertension - improving on work done at the Mayo Clinic and involving the sympathetic nervous system - will be performed more than 1,800 times at Michigan through the 1940s.

With the Catherine Street hospitals filling and growing outdated, more than $1 million is appropriated for construction of a new hospital; actual construction is delayed because of World War I. U-M opens of the nation's first departments of radiology (then called Roentgenology after the pioneer of X-rays). In 1918, a dedicated Dermatology Hospital is the last building to open in the Catherine Street complex.

In 1919, construction begins on the new hospital. The original appropriation is only enough, however, to pay for the shell of the building, and it stands gaunt and boarded from 1921 to 1923, when Governor Groesbeck obtains an additional $2.3 million in appropriations. Hugh Cabot, a graduate of the Harvard Medical School and a specialist in genitourinary surgery, joins the faculty as professor and director of surgery.

In early August 1925, a new era in U-M care begins as the first patients move into the new 724-bed University Hospital. Designed by renowned architect Albert Kahn, it was the largest university hospital in America at the time, with nine levels and two miles of corridors. The Catherine Street buildings remain in use, bringing total inpatient capacity to over 1,100. Also this year, U-M opens the Couzens Hall dormitory, with room for 285 nursing students, and the Medical School's East Medical Building on North University Ave., focused on basic medical science research and teaching.

The Simpson Memorial Institute, originally devoted to the search for a cure for the fatal condition known as pernicious anemia, opens. After a U-M team discovers a treatment, the building becomes a hub for clinical research on many blood-related illnesses. Also this year, the Homeopathic Medical School and Hospital close, and their building becomes additional inpatient space for the main hospital through 1940.

In 1928, Reuben L. Kahn comes to Ann Arbor to reorganize the hospital’s clinical laboratories for better diagnostic services, teaching and research. Several years earlier he developed the precipitation test for syphilis (Kahn test) as immunologist in charge of the Wassermann Laboratory in Lansing.

In 1932, Cameron Haight of the Department of Surgery performs one of the first successful pneumonectomies in the world. In 1941, he will perform the world’s first successful direct repair of esophageal atresia.

With the introduction of a Hollerith punch card system to record diagnosis, treatment, and condition information about each patient in a way that can be grouped together and analyzed, the hospital's first statistical department opens. This innovation makes it easier for teams to do research on various diseases, particularly cancer – and paves the way for later innovations in radiation therapy and more.

Elizabeth C. Crosby is promoted to professor of anatomy, the first woman at the University of Michigan Medical School to hold this rank.

As the number of physicians in training – from medical school to residency – grew, U-M opened two new buildings to house them near the hospitals. The Victor Vaughan House for medical students on Catherine Street, and the Interns Residence attached to the north side of the main hospital, both opened this year. It joined two other additions to University Hospital: a modern Neuropsychiatric Institute, which freed the former Psychopathic Hospital on Catherine Street for outpatient housing, and a Surgical Wing with operating rooms and pathology facilities that included the first Blood Bank. U-M’s total inpatient capacity is now 1,350 beds.

The Human Heredity Clinic is established in a house that had been moved to the medical campus, to collect data and provide genetic counseling regarding hereditary disease. One of the first human genetics programs in the country connected to a university hospital, it paved the way for the later Department of Human Genetics. The School of Public Health also opened this year, though master's degrees in hygiene had been awarded by the Medical School from the late 1800s to 1916, and by a division of the graduate school until 1941.

To meet the medical needs of U.S. troops fighting in Europe, the federal government called upon the Medical School to assemble a hospital team for deployment in 1942. The team of 40 physicians and 120 nurses who made up the 298th General Hospital left Ann Arbor in June and treated wounded in England, France and Belgium before the end of the war in 1945. Meanwhile back on campus, the Medical School accelerated medical student training, graduating them in three years rather than four.

The Veterans Readjustment Center opened to support the mental health needs of World War II servicemen who had had trouble adjusting to civilian life, and gave them a place to receive treatment from U-M psychiatrists while enjoying rest and relaxation in well-equipped recreation facilities. A 50-bed, state-funded facility near the main hospital, it was the only one of its type operated by a teaching institution in the U.S.

After 40 years of delivering babies and caring for women's health needs in the converted Eye & Ear Ward building, the first state-of-the-art Women’s Hospital opens on the eastern edge of the medical campus. Built with 74 beds and 40 bassinets, two delivery rooms, an operating room and research facilities, the building – now connected to the current hospitals -- is still in use as offices.

As severe outbreaks of polio nationwide left more and more young people needing “iron lungs” and other advanced care, the nation’s third Poliomyelitis Respirator Center opens in University Hospital. The type of care paved the way for the development of intensive care units for treatment of other conditions requiring highly specialized technology and staff. The School of Nursing established the four-year undergraduate degree program that continues to this day. During this 60th anniversary of nurse training at Michigan, the school was still under the governance of a Medical School/hospital leadership committee, which would change in 1955 with the appointment of its first dean.

A new Outpatient Clinic Building opens next to University Hospital, expanding care for patients who don't require overnight stays and freeing up space for the first 24-hour emergency care area in the main hospital. The facility, now known as the MedInn building, is still in use for clinical care, a hotel for patient families, and offices. Albert Wheeler, Ph.D., who studies the bacterium that causes syphilis, becomes U-M’s first Black faculty member as he joins the Medical School faculty. During a leave of absence, he served a term as Ann Arbor’s mayor in the 1970s.

As the need for post-World War II care for veterans grew, the Medical School faculty petitioned in 1948 for U-M to become involved in the development and operation of a new proposed Veterans Administration hospital. Through a partnership that continues today, faculty physicians, medical students and residents provide care for veterans, and conduct research on veterans’ health issues, at the facility that opened with 488 beds just a mile from University Hospital and has expanded ever since to serve veterans from across the region.

The rapid growth of all types of biomedical research, and of the use of radioactive materials in the treatment of cancer, sparked the building of the first facilities in what would grow to become a large complex on the corner of Zina Pitcher Place and Ann Street. Over time, the Kresge Complex would include multiple research buildings and U-M's first unified health sciences library, as well as the Alice Crocker Lloyd Radiation Therapy Center, and the Upjohn Center for Clinical Pharmacology. Demolition of the complex in 2010 paved the way for a new hospital: the D. Dan and Betty Kahn Health Care Pavilion, with a name that harks back to the pavilions added to U-M's first hospital in the late 1800s.

In December, the first patients arrived at the Children's Psychiatric Hospital - a 75-bed facility that was one of the first in the country devoted to children with mental and behavioral health conditions. With facilities for schooling, recreation and treatment, it sought to help children with all aspects of life, and many stayed for months or years. Meanwhile, the effort to bring modern scientific tools to bear in understanding mental illness also launched in 1955, with the formation of the Mental Health Research Institute or MHRI. Its building, at the corner of Zina Pitcher Place and Catherine St., opened in 1960 as a home for research on the genetic, molecular, systemic and societal roots of depression, addiction and more. MHRI evolved into today's Michigan Neuroscience Institute.

Herbert Sloan of the Section of Thoracic Surgery performs one of the first successful open-heart surgeries in Michigan.

The Medical Science I building opens, marking a clear shift by moving the Medical School’s administration and several of its academic departments out of the original campus to be closer to the hospital complex. This facility also included a new home for the School of Nursing. Also this year, the Regents adopt the name "University of Michigan Medical Center" to mean the Medical School, the University Hospital complex, and the School of Nursing. The first hospital chapel, funded by a donor, opened.

The first hospital gift shop, run by the Volunteer Services Guild, opens. The Guild, founded the year before, was the forerunner of the all-volunteer Friends of the University Hospital, which today operates gift shops whose proceeds fund grants for patient and family activities. Volunteer programs at the hospital date back to 1941, prompted by wartime staff shortages. Also in 1959, the U-M Burn Center opens – the first dedicated burn unit in Michigan and one of the first in the U.S. It seeks to vastly improve survival of burn injuries through a team approach.

The Kresge Hearing Research Institute building, adjacent to the main Kresge building, opens and becomes the hub for otolaryngology research. Also, the rapid growth in biomedical research involving animals led to the establishment of a central Animal Care Unit with its own facilities. And, the first inpatient unit devoted to Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation care opened in University Hospital.

In this year, U-M surgical teams performed the first coronary bypass operation, and the first heart transplant, in Michigan. Both were aided by a heart-lung machine co-developed by U-M experts and a local company whose product was used the year before, in the world's first heart transplant in South Africa.

The first C.S. Mott Children's Hospital building, now known as University Hospital South, opens. It provides enhanced dedicated space for children, who had previously received care in wards of Old Main hospital. The Medical Science II building opens with facilities for several research and education departments, marking the final part of the Medical School to move off of the Diag. Also, the Regents create a new leadership position, the Dean-Directorship of the Medical School and Medical Center, and expand the Hospital Board membership as well as allowing physicians and other professional staff more involvement in the running of inpatient and outpatient facilities - including the first Chief of Staff. The Towsley Center for Continuing Medical Education opens, expanding the ability of physicians from across the region to come to the medical campus to update their knowledge and skills.

To advance the still-new field of neonatology, premature and critically ill newborns, a new three-floor building between Women's Hospital and Mott Hospital was built to house the James and Lynelle Holden Neonatal Unit (now called the Holden Newborn Intensive Care Unit ) and an adjacent research facility. It's the first high-risk-pregnancy patient care and research center in Michigan, and the first unit in the country to link an obstetrical hospital with a children's hospital.

The medical campus continued to expand across the Huron River, with the opening of the Turner Geriatric Clinic on Wall Street next to the Parkview rehabilitation and recovery center and near the Riverview Psychiatric Clinic, both opened in recent years. The Parkview center included the first home of what would become the Kellogg Eye Center. Meanwhile, after years of costly renovations – including the conversion of all of University Hospital's old-fashioned open wards into private and semi-private patient rooms – the voices of those calling for a new hospital finally won out. Planning began in earnest for a Replacement Hospital to replace what had become known as the "Old Main" hospital.

As the Saint Joseph Mercy Hospital that had stood on North Ingalls Street for decades was vacated for a new facility outside Ann Arbor, U-M purchased the facility for use by the School of Nursing, hospital administration and units displaced during the construction of the new University Hospital. Also this year, diabetes researchers won funding from the National Institutes of Health to create the Michigan Diabetes Research and Training Center, one of five such comprehensive centers in the country. And, plans began to upgrade the makeshift emergency services area in the Outpatient building, just as emergency medicine was becoming recognized nationally as its own medical specialty. Ground is broken for the Taubman Medical Library on Catherine Street, on the site of the 1890s hospitals.

The medical center makes its first foray outside the city limits with the opening of the Chelsea Family Practice Clinic on the campus of Chelsea Hospital. Staffed by the first faculty of a newly formed department, it becomes a training ground for a new generation of academic family medicine physicians.

With the approval of $285 million in state and university funding, the five-year project to build a replacement for the outdated "Old Main" hospital begins. In addition to an adult inpatient facility with hundreds of patient beds, more than 20 operating rooms and advanced technology for imaging and clinical labs, the project includes a large outpatient clinic building attached in an L shape, and plenty of parking in an attached structure. Also this year, the first patient is treated with ECMO (extracorporeal membrane oxygenation) at Michigan, temporarily taking over for both heart and lungs in an advanced life support option used to this day.

With the emergency department staffed 24 hours a day, 7 days a week with specialized medical staff since 1981, the creation of a helicopter service to transport critically ill patients was approved and flew its first mission in May, 1982. The Brighton Health Center, the first clinical facility outside Washtenaw County, opens. The Medical School receives approval to build its first new research building since the 1950s: The Medical Science Research Building I. Opened in 1986 on the northwestern edge of the original medical campus, it was joined in 1989 and 1995 by MSRB II and III.

With the growth in options for advanced eye care, and a grant from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, a new building for ophthalmology care, research and education opens on Wall Street.

On Valentine's Day, a massive operation began, to transfer patients, equipment and staff from "Old Main" to the new 11-story, 550-bed University Hospital. The Taubman Center welcomed its first outpatients soon after. Also this year, a new sports medicine and rehabilitation center opened in the Domino's Farms complex in northeast Ann Arbor, leasing space from Domino's Pizza's world headquarters. The Regents approve the creation of a Comprehensive Cancer Center, to bring together clinical care and research in all forms of cancer. The state approves the launch of M-CARE, an HMO health insurance plan that is one of the first university-owned plans in the country.

U-M geneticist Francis Collins leads a team that isolates the gene responsible for cystic fibrosis - the first time a disease had been shown to result from specific changes in a gene. They and their colleagues in Toronto announce the discovery simultaneously. Also this year, the Medical School creates a Transgenic Animal Core to help scientists harness new genetic techniques to study genes involved in human disease. The Geriatrics Center, one of the first in the nation with clinical care, research, education and community services for people over 60 under one umbrella, launches. It includes a research partnership with the VA Ann Arbor Healthcare System to study issues in the aging veteran population. The Livonia Center for Specialty Care and the Dexter Health Center open.

The Maternal Child Health Center, which integrates services for children and women, opens with both new space for advanced pediatric and birth-related care, private birthing rooms, and renovated units in existing Women’s and Mott hospitals. A Medical Procedures Unit opens in University Hospital, expanding access to outpatient procedures including endoscopy. The Trauma-Burn Center is formed by the addition of specialized trauma care and training to the Burn Center; two years later the program earns its first Level 1 trauma verification. The Cancer Center earns "comprehensive" designation from the National Cancer Institute.

As part of a push to provide primary and specialty care closer to patients and in less-intimidating settings than the main medical campus, U-M buys a group of five medical office buildings near Briarwood Mall, opens health centers in Saline and Chelsea, and receives approval to build the first building at what would become the East Medical Campus. The East Ann Arbor Health Center opens the next year, along with the Ypsilanti Health Center. The first all-digital radiology imaging system goes online, allowing easier sharing of patient scans from the growing number of imaging technologies available for clinical diagnosis and monitoring. A Bone Marrow Transplant Unit opens in University Hospital, offering specialized care for patients during a time of rapid growth in stem cell transplant care. U-M physicians begin staffing the emergency room at Hurley Hospital in Flint.

The U-M Board of Regents officially approves "University of Michigan Health System" as a designation for the U-M Hospitals and Health Centers, Medical School, M-CARE and Michigan Health Corp., all under the direction of a new leadership position, the Executive Vice President for Medical Affairs. A new Cancer Center and Geriatrics Center Building opens next to University Hospital, and connecting to Medical School buildings. The expansion of ambulatory care into surrounding communities continues, with the opening of the Howell Health Center, and planning for health centers in Canton and Livonia that opened in 1998. The first Collaborative Quality Initiative – a concerted effort to study and reduce variation in minimally invasive heart procedures in hospitals across the state – launches with funding from Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan. Called BMC2-PCI, it paved the way for dozens more initiatives aimed at improving quality and safety of care. The Injury Research Center, forerunner of the Injury Prevention Center, is founded.

150 years after the first medical students arrived on campus, the Medical School marks its sesquicentennial with scholarly publications, historical exhibits and namings, and celebratory events. The Regents approve the creation of a Cardiovascular Center to unite clinical, research and educational activities related to the heart, blood vessels and stroke. Planning begins for a future building on the site where the Old Main hospital had once stood.

Building on decades of international work by faculty and learners, the Global REACH program in the Medical School launches to accelerate and coordinate education, training and research efforts. To spur research, clinical advances and cross-campus collaboration to address mood disorders, the Regents approve the nation's first comprehensive Depression Center. Three surgical specialties - Neurosurgery, Orthopaedic Surgery and Urology - become full-fledged academic departments, one year after Emergency Medicine receives the same designation. Survival Flight helicopters begin landing on a new double helipad that juts out of the bluff below University Hospital and connects to the Emergency Department via a tunnel and elevator.

The Medical School begins to implement a new curriculum that integrates biomedical, clinical and psychosocial sciences with clinical skills and professionalism. The Life Sciences Institute building, home to cross-disciplinary biomedical research, opens even as the Medical School's much larger Biomedical Science Research Building rises across the street.

The first new research building in a decade on the medical campus, the 472,000-square-foot Biomedical Science Research Building, is completed. Taking up an entire block, its flexible laboratory design aims to increase collaboration across disciplines. A massive project to create a new home for inpatient and outpatient care for children and women receives approval. Its location at the eastern edge of the medical campus was once the home of the Terrace Apartments built after World War II to house married students.

With the opening of the Rachel Upjohn Building for mental health care and research, an Ambulatory Surgery and Medical Procedures center and expanded medical imaging as well as a new home for the Geriatrics Center, the East Medical Campus becomes a destination for many types of care. To better support researchers performing clinical and translational research, the Michigan Institute for Clinical and Health Research launches, one of the first in the nation funded by a new type of federal grant. The M-CARE insurance plan is sold to Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan, with the proceeds going to launch a new health care research center.

The U-M Cardiovascular Center's clinical building opens, providing a new home for much of U-M's heart, vascular and stroke care for adult patients. It stands on the former site of "Old Main" hospital on Ann Street. A major gift creates the A. Alfred Taubman Medical Research Institute to support fundamental research into a wide range of human disease. The crash of a Survival Flight jet on a mission to carry organs for transplant from Wisconsin to Ann Arbor kills all six members of the medical and flight crew.

Michigan voters approve a constitutional amendment to allow human embryonic stem cell research in Michigan, after a voter education campaign led in part by U-M. The first line of stem cells derived under the new law is announced less than two years later and made available for researchers nationwide. All three U-M hospitals and all outpatient centers complete their transition to an entirely computerized order entry system called UM-CareLink. The Faculty Group Practice takes on responsibility for ambulatory (outpatient) care as part of an ongoing effort to integrate the Medical School and the Hospitals & Health Centers, and to increase efficiency and coordination across the Health System.

Amid a deep recession, U-M purchases a vacant former Pfizer campus in northeast Ann Arbor, names it the North Campus Research Complex, and begins converting it into a hub for research laboratories, institutes and support services. Federal "rescue" funds totaling $47 million help support Medical School research through the recession.

The Brehm Tower at the W.K. Kellogg Eye Center more than doubles the capacity for advanced ophthalmology care and provides space for diabetes research. The Joint Institute for Translational and Clinical Research between U-M and Peking University in Beijing is established to sponsor high-impact collaborative research. The Kresge Complex, no longer suited for modern medical research, is demolished.

The new C.S. Mott Women's Hospital and Von Voigtlander Women's Hospital open, providing a massive new home with 1.1 million square feet of space for inpatient and outpatient specialty care for infants, children and women. The two towers include 348 private patient rooms and 16 operating rooms, support services including a Ronald McDonald House location for patients' parents, and a dedicated rooftop helipad. The increasing role of data-driven research on health care and biomedicine leads to the creation of the Institute for Healthcare Policy and Innovation and a department of Computational Medicine and Bioinformatics. The first staff and scientists move in to the North Campus Research Complex, while Pfizer's former kitchens there are put to temporary use in preparing food for University Hospital patients. This allows the hospital kitchens to be renovated to allow "room service" ordering instead of a limited menu.

Survival Flight begins flying three new helicopters that are larger, faster and able to fly farther than their predecessors. A new master affiliation agreement with the Michigan hospitals of Trinity Health paves the way for clinical cooperation in future, including increased capacity for U-M-led inpatient care in Trinity's Ann Arbor facility, and later a joint ownership of Chelsea Hospital. Implementation of a new electronic medical record system called MiChart begins, replacing almost all paper-based recordkeeping and enabling patients to have digital access to their information. The health system launches an Accountable Care Organization as part of a new federal program aimed at improving care and containing costs for the Medicare system. This follows five years of pilot testing the concept at U-M and select other sites. The Department of Biomedical Engineering becomes a joint department of the College of Engineering and the Medical School.

With medical publishing moving ever more toward digital, and better space for medical education urgently needed, the Regents approve a dramatic rethinking of the Taubman Health Sciences Library building. Half a million books were moved off campus to make way for a clinical skills training center and small-group learning space. A new affiliation with the multi-hospital MidMichigan Health system begins, to expand access, quality, and the level of care for patients in the middle of the Lower Peninsula. In recognition of a previously anonymous gift from the Samuel and Jean Frankel Foundation, the Cardiovascular Center is renamed in the Frankels' honor.

The opening of a 100,000-square-foot health center in Northville Township, with primary and specialty care for adults and children and a wide range of outpatient procedures, marks a major expansion of service to the metro Detroit area. As demand for adult inpatient care continues to grow, the former children's and women's hospital buildings are renamed University Hospital South, and converted for shorter hospital stays and outpatient diagnosis and treatment.

With demand for advanced emergency care for critically ill patients rising rapidly, the former children's emergency care area in University Hospital reopens as the Emergency Critical Care Center, one of the first of its kind in the nation. Within a few years, a study shows it improved survival and reduced need for intensive care unit stays. The Department of Medical Education is renamed the Department of Learning Health Sciences, building on roots laid down in 1926 with the Department of Postgraduate Medicine. The faculty votes to approve a major transformation of the medical student curriculum including M-Home learning communities, a Doctoring course and Paths of Excellence. The Center for Interprofessional Education launched to foster connection among students from 10 health-related schools and colleges. A new building for the School of Nursing opens near the medical campus.

Work begins to transform nearly 300,000 square feet of vacant space at the North Campus Research Complex into Medical School biomedical science laboratories and a massive Clinical Pathology site to serve the needs of U-M hospitals and clinics and of the MLabs national reference laboratory service. A new affiliation with Metro Health, a Grand Rapids-area health system later renamed University of Michigan Health-West, begins. A new leadership structure for the academic medical center debuts, with the executive vice president for medical affairs also taking on the role of Medical School dean, and chief officers for clinical operations, academics and research also serving as executive vice deans of the Medical School.

A 75,000-square-foot West Ann Arbor multispecialty health center opens, greatly expanding on the previous primary care center opened in the mid-1990s. The academic medical center – encompassing the hospitals, health centers, Medical School, and affiliated centers, institutes and clinical care partnerships – is renamed Michigan Medicine. U-M launches Precision Health, a major research and clinical translation effort based in social, medical, computational, and engineering science.

Expanding on a tradition of providing clinical care north of Ann Arbor since the 1980s, a new Brighton Center for Specialty Care opens with primary and specialty clinical care, and facilities for diagnostic procedures and outpatient surgery. The three-level, 297,000-square-foot center complements two other clinical locations in the area. In recognition of a $150 million gift from Richard and Susan Rogel, the Comprehensive Cancer Center is named in their honor. A joint venture between Michigan Medicine and Saint Joseph Mercy Health System results in joint ownership of St. Joseph Mercy Chelsea Hospital, and expands access to a range of services and U-M providers. Planning for a new inpatient tower begins; the site where the Kresge Complex once stood is identified as the location.

A ground breaking marks the start of construction on a 12-story, 264-bed, 690,000 square foot adult hospital tower on Zina Pitcher Place at Ann Street, to improve access to surgical specialty care and allow all inpatients to have a private room. Construction halts the next spring because of COVID-19, but restarts in mid-2021 with a target opening date of fall 2025. In late 2022, a $50 million gift leads to its naming as the D. Dan and Betty Kahn Health Care Pavilion. A new affiliation agreement between U-M Health and Lansing-based Sparrow Health System allows the launch of a pediatric specialty care joint venture and a minority investment in the Physicians Health Plan insurance plan. Michigan Medicine's portion of U-M's Victors for Michigan philanthropy campaign brings in nearly $1.5 billion in gifts and commitments from nearly 107,000 donors, to fund research, programs, support for faculty and students, and facilities.

The arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic in Michigan leads to sudden and dramatic shifts in clinical care, research, education and administrative support across Michigan Medicine. A rapid pivot to telehealth and virtual learning, the construction of temporary COVID-19 inpatient care units and outpatient clinics, a drive to collect personal protective equipment from community sources amid a national shortage, the launch of home-based programs for hospital-level care, and many other changes large and small took place within the first months. By mid-December, the first batches of COVID-19 vaccine arrived at the hospital, prioritized for frontline clinical staff.