University of Pittsburgh Medical Center

UPMC (University of Pittsburgh Medical Center)

Type	Private (not-for-profit)
Industry	Health care
Founded	1893
Headquarters	U.S. Steel Tower Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Area served	Western Pennsylvania, North Central Pennsylvania, Western New York, Ohio, Italy, Brasil, China, Colombia, Germany, India, Ireland, Japan, Kazakhstan, Lithuania, Myanmar, Qatar, Russia, Serbia, Singapore, Spain, United Kingdom
Key people	Jeffrey Romoff - President Steven Shapiro - Chief Medical and Scientific Officer
Services	tertiary level clinical care rehabilitation cancer centers community medical facilities retirement & long-term care health insurance health care management medical information technology
Revenue	$12.8 billion USD (FY 2016)
Number of employees	60,000 (2016)
Divisions	Provider Services Insurance Services International & Commercial Services
Website	upmc.com

The University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) is a $12.8 billion integrated global nonprofit health enterprise that has 60,000 employees, over 20 hospitals with more than 5,000 licensed beds, 500 clinical locations including outpatient sites and doctors’ offices, a 3 million-member health insurance division, as well as commercial and international ventures. UPMC is closely affiliated with its academic partner, the University of Pittsburgh. It is considered a leading American health care provider, as its flagship facilities have ranked in US News & World Report "Honor Roll" of the approximately 15 to 20 best hospitals in America for well over a decade. As of 2016, UPMC is ranked 12th nationally among the best hospitals (and second in Pennsylvania) by US News & World Report and ranked in 15 of 16 specialty areas when including Magee-Womens Hospital of UPMC. This does not include Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh of UPMC which ranked in the top 10 of pediatric centers in a separate US News ranking.

UPMC has its roots in the 1893 establishment of Presbyterian Hospital, which serves as the medical center's flagship facility, and the 1886 founding of the Western Pennsylvania Medical College. Soon after its founding, the medical college became affiliated with the Western University of Pennsylvania in 1892, and in 1908, was fully integrated into the university which that same year was renamed to the University of Pittsburgh. Already having worked out informal agreements for teaching and staffing privileges with a number of local hospitals, Pitt and its School of Medicine desired to establish an academic medical center, and by the mid-1920s had formed a plan with a coalition of city hospitals to have them relocate to the Oakland neighborhood of the city that the university had itself moved to in 1909. The University provided Presbyterian Hospital, then located on the North Side, with a tract of land on its campus for construction of a new hospital which broke ground in 1930 and was subsequently opened in 1938. By the end of the 1930s, the University of Pittsburgh had helped to form the "University Medical Center" which included Falk Clinic, Children's, Eye and Ear, Libby Steele Magee, Presbyterian General, and Women's Hospital, as well as the planned Municipal Hospital. In 1949, a new affiliation agreement between the University and Presbyterian Hospital established a three-tiered mission of patient care, research, and education and by 1951, the hospital name changed to Presbyterian University Hospital in order to reflect its close ties with the University of Pittsburgh. In 1958, the "University of Pittsburgh Health Center" was noted to comprise (1) Schools of Medicine, Dentistry, Pharmacy, Nursing, and the Graduate School of Public Health; (2) Presbyterian, Woman's, Children's, Eye and Ear, and Magee Hospitals; and (3) Falk Clinic, Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic, Child Guidance Center, Salk Hall, and Central Blood Bank. Through the years, the University and the hospitals moved toward an ever-tightening alliance. In 1965, the University, Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic which was managed by the School of Medicine, Presbyterian-University, Magee and Women's, Eye and Ear, and Children's Hospitals incorporated the University Health Center of Pittsburgh (UHCP). In 1969, Montefiore Hospital joined UHCP. In the 1970s, a new model of administration, in which clinical revenues were invested into research, was implemented at Western Psychiatric under the leadership of Thomas Detre. After guiding the psychiatric institute to become one of the largest recipients of National Institute of Health funding, Detre assumed leadership overseeing all six of the University's schools of health sciences in the early 1980s. Implementing the same administrative model in those units, the collective schools of the health sciences and medical center were ultimately transformed into one of the largest centers for biomedical research in the nation.