What It Means to Be an Academic Medical Center

What is an academic medical center?

Most hospitals are primarily focused on treating the patients that come through the door, which is very important. An academic medical center does this and so much more.

At an academic medical center, education, research, and clinical care are combined to provide the best possible clinical care, that uses cutting-edge technologies, resources and therapies other community hospitals may not have available.

When you come to Penn, you can rest assured the doctors taking care of you aren’t just using the latest medical technologies; they’re also developing them.

Over the past 30 years, Penn physicians and scientists have participated in many important discoveries, including:

• The first general vaccine against pneumonia.
• The introduction of total intravenous feeding.
• The development of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and other imaging technologies.
• The discovery of the Philadelphia chromosome, which revolutionized cancer research by making the connection between genetic abnormalities and cancer.

Penn Medicine is part of the American Association of Medical Colleges (AAMC), which represents 145 accredited US medical schools, approximately 400 major teaching hospitals and health systems, including 51 Department of Veterans Affairs medical centers; and 93 academic and scientific societies.

What are the benefits of going to an academic medical center?

With physicians, nurses, researchers, and teachers all working in unison, patients have better access to the latest medical breakthroughs and clinical trials that aren’t available at other hospitals.

Here at Penn Medicine our team of experts are not only trained in using cutting-edge technology, but they also develop it. Penn Medicine remains committed to looking ahead at the future of medical care, which is why we focus on teaching future generations of medical professionals the best ways to care for their patients.