Vanderbilt University Medical Center


The Vanderbilt University Medical Center is a medical provider with multiple hospitals in Nashville, Tennessee, as well as clinics and facilities throughout Middle Tennessee. VUMC is an independent non-profit organization, but maintains academic affiliations with Vanderbilt University.

Overview

It comprises the following units:
VUMC also has hospitals, clinics, physician practices and affiliates covering nine hospital systems and 48 hospital locations, serving an extensive patient base. In 2008, the Medical Center moved 23 clinics and administrative offices into the renovated 100 Oaks Mall in the Berry Hill section of Nashville, filling of space.
VUMC is known for its highly acclaimed teaching hospital and its groundbreaking efforts in electronic medical records. Its health care providers see more than 1.6 million patients each year and its hospitals perform more than 35,000 surgical procedures and see 65,000 patients in its Emergency Room. The Medical Center employs 19,600 staff. Vanderbilt biomedical scientists in more than 100 laboratories conducted more than $616 million of federally and corporately sponsored research as of 2013.
In April 2016 Vanderbilt University and VUMC became separate organizations legally and financially. The two organizations cooperate, and VUMC clinicians continue to serve as faculty members at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine and Vanderbilt University School of Nursing.

Rankings and awards

VUMC was ranked as the best hospital in Tennessee in the 2014 annual ranking by U.S. News & World Report. In the 2014 annual rankings by the magazine, the following VUMC specialty programs were nationally ranked: Cancer; Ear, Nose and Throat; Nephrology; Neurology and Neurosurgery; Pulmonology; and Urology. High performing specialty programs were: Cardiology and Heart Surgery; Diabetes and Endocrinology; Gastroenterology; Geriatrics; Gynecology; and Orthopaedics.
Vanderbilt University was named in Fortune's "100 Best Companies to Work For" list for 2009. More than 80% of the university's employees work for the Medical Center. The other rankings VUMC has achieved include being listed in the 100 Top Hospitals by Truven Health Analytics; being listed as among the nation's 100 "Most Wired" hospitals by the American Hospital Association; and listed as one of the "100 Great Hospitals in America" by Becker's Hospital Review.
Vanderbilt is also the home of BioVU, one of the world's largest DNA databanks, which holds more than 170,000 samples and is used to discover new genetic predictors of disease and drug action by scientists worldwide.
The Center has also hosted an award since 2006, the Vanderbilt Prize in Biomedical Science, which honors "women who have made significant contributions to the science of medicine".

Controversies

As of March 2014, the institution is being sued by the federal government in a whistle-blower case for a decade-long Medicare fraud scheme. In May 2015, a federal court ruled Vanderbilt University Medical Center was in violation of the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act for laying off 200 employees without adequate notice and will have to pay out $400,000 pending an appeal. Finally, the university admitted one of its scientists fraudulently falsified six years of biomedical research in high-profile journals.

Monroe Carell Jr. Children's Hospital

The Vanderbilt Children's Hospital has been in operation since the 1970s, but was housed in the main Vanderbilt hospital until 2004.
Monroe J. Carell, Jr., former CEO of Central Parking Corporation, raised $79 million for the construction of a new stand-alone facility, including $20 million from his family's personal donations and additional money secured through fundraising efforts.

History

Vanderbilt faculty have won two Nobel Prizes in Physiology or Medicine. In 1971 Earl Sutherland, Jr., received the prize for his discovery of Cyclic AMP. Stanley Cohen received a Nobel in 1986, as he shared the award with Rita Levi-Montalcini of Italy for their discovery of epidermal growth factor, a hormone that can speed up certain biological processes.
Some other important research firsts from Vanderbilt's history:
Vanderbilt operates the only Level 1 Trauma Center, the only Level 4 Neonatal Intensive Care Unit and the only Level 3 Burn Unit in its region.
The LifeFlight helicopter ambulance service has eight helicopters, operated by Air Methods but staffed with Vanderbilt Flight Paramedics and Nurses, and an airplane transport and makes more than 2,800 flights a year. Vanderbilt also offers an organ transplantation center. Vanderbilt's first kidney transplant was in 1962; since then there have been more than 3,000 kidneys transplanted at Vanderbilt. VUMC has also had more than 2000 liver transplants and 600 heart and lung transplants. Among Vanderbilt's other transplant milestones were Tennessee's first pancreas transplant in 1985, the first successful heart-lung transplant in the state in 1987, the first pediatric heart transplant in the state in 1987, and the first triple organ transplant of heart, lungs and liver in 2000. The Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center is one of 50 National Cancer Institute-designated cancer centers, and the only one in Tennessee that provides treatment for adult and pediatric cancers. The center is also a member of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network, a non-profit alliance of 21 centers focused on improving quality and efficiency of cancer care.

Research

VUMC ranks in the top 10 among the 126 medical schools in the United States in receipt of research funding from the National Institutes of Health

Education

Both the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine and the Vanderbilt University School of Nursing rank in the top 20 in the U.S. News & World Report rankings. The School of Medicine was founded in 1874.
The School of Nursing was founded in 1908. It became a part of the Medical Center in 1984. The School of Nursing phased out its undergraduate nursing degree in 1989, becoming exclusively a graduate school with a mission of educating advanced-level nurses.