University of Washington Medical Center is one of the nation's leading academic medical centers, which provides highly specialized medical care in areas such as cardiology, high-risk pregnancy and neonatal intensive care, oncology, orthopaedics and organ transplantation. Patients travel from across Washington, Wyoming, Alaska, Montana and Idaho for these specialized services.
U.S. News & World Report’s 2011 edition of America’s Best Hospitals ranked UW Medical Center thirteenth in the nation in overall rankings. UWMC has been ranked among the country’s best since the rankings began in 1993. The medical center also was named the nation’s first Magnet Hospital for excellence in nursing care by the American Nurses Credentialing Center, which has continued to honor UWMC with this award every four years since 1994.
UW Medical Center is part of the UW Medicine health system, which also includes Harborview Medical Center, Northwest Hospital & Medical Center, Valley Medical Center, UW Neighborhood Clinics, UW Physicians, UW School of Medicine, and Airlift Northwest.
UW Medical Center partners with the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and Seattle Children’s through the Seattle Cancer 
Care Alliance to provide the most advanced cancer diagnosis and treatment available.
Report to the Community
Areas of specialization
- Cancer care, stem cell transplantation
- Cardiology at the Regional Heart Center
- Orthopaedics and sports medicine
- Solid organ transplantation -liver, kidney, heart, lung, pancreas and intestine
- Otolaryngology/Head and neck surgery
- Diagnostic imaging
- Neonatal intensive care, including the region’s first Level IIIB neonatal intensive care unit
2010 statistics
| Licensed beds |
450 |
| Employees |
3,982 |
| Physicians |
1,829 |
| Admissions |
19,260 |
| Emergency Department visits |
25,602 |
| Clinic visits |
323,393 |
| Surgery cases |
15,137 |
Medical firsts
UWMC physicians are also UW School of Medicine faculty members, teaching the next generation of health-care professionals and advancing medical discovery to set the standard of care worldwide. Our physicians have:
- Invented the Scribner Shunt, which made long-term kidney dialysis possible
- Established the world’s first multidisciplinary pain center
- Designed the Bruce Protocol, a multistage treadmill test that remains the gold standard for evaluating heart problems
- Developed use of Doppler ultrasound for diagnosing vascular disease
- Performed the region’s first heart transplant surgery, liver transplant and total knee replacement
- Established the Institute for Simulation and Interprofessional Studies, or ISIS, to provide leadership in the use of simulated technologies to improve patient safety and outcomes, as well as health-care education
- Spearheaded the U.S. portion of a World Health Organization pilot project that concluded complications from surgery dropped significantly when medical teams use surgical checklists
History
UW Medical Center opened as University Hospital in 1959. It was one of the nation’s smallest teaching hospitals when it opened, but immediately became a leader in health-care innovation.
UW Medical Center has broken ground on a construction project that will provide additional space for premature babies, inpatients and diagnostic imaging.
Learn more about UW Medical Center’s history and future >