The University of Washington Medical Center owns and manages CUMG and the Seattle Cancer Care Consortium, which is comprised of the University of Washington Medical Center, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and Seattle Children's Hospital. The mission of the University of Washington Medical Center is to advance medicine, provide outstanding primary and specialty care, and train future physicians, scientists and other health care professionals.
In 1946, the University of Washington (Seattle) established the School of Medicine as the only medical school in the Pacific-Northwest region of the United States (Washington, Wyoming, Alaska, Montana, Idaho). As the medical school continued to grow, the local hospital in Seattle became increasingly unable to meet the clinical teaching needs of medical students.
In 1951, the Washington State Legislature approved the establishment of a hospital attached to the medical school. The construction of the hospital was then facilitated by George Aagaard (1914-1997), the Dean of the School of Medicine.
The University of Washington Hospital opened its doors on May 4, 1959 as the precursor to the University of Washington Medical Centre (UWMC), which, in addition to the main campus at Mont lake Cut, also includes the Roosevelt Campus (which offers primary care and specialist clinics), the Sports Medicine Clinic and the Eastside Specialist Clinic. In addition, the University of Washington Medicine Local Heart Centre is located on UWMC's Alder wood campus.
In 1998, UWMC joined with the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Institute and Seattle Children's Hospital to form the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance (SCCA) in order to better serve oncology patients.
UWMC has three living Nobel laureates (out of five), 35 members of the Institute of Medicine, 32 members of the National Academy of Sciences, and 13 Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigators.
The University of Washington received two of the first three National Centers of Excellence in Genome Sciences created by the National Institutes of Health: one for the School of Medicine and one for the School of Engineering.
The ranking of institutions receiving NIH (National Institutes of Health) funding in 2013 were: Harvard, University of Washington Medical Center, and Johns Hopkins.
In 2013, the University of Washington School of Medicine brought in over $1 billion in research funding.
