The University of Louisville (UofL) has one of the oldest medical schools in the country. It was developed, in part, to provide medical care for riverboat workers on the Ohio River. UofL has a long and rich history of educating excellent clinical practitioners, and it has graduated well over half of the practicing physicians in the state of Kentucky.

UofL's medical school, located in downtown Louisville, offers master's, doctoral and first professional degrees in 20 clinical and basic science departments, and has approximately 600 full-time faculty members and 1,500 volunteer faculty. The Health Sciences Center now teaches and mentors about 2,200 graduate and professional students.

The University hosts a number of nationally recognized academic programs and is home to some of the nation's top researchers. The medical center is internationally recognized for advances made by its medical school faculty, including the first self-contained artificial heart, the first successful hand transplant, and research in cancer, heart disease, and stem cells.

For more than a decade, UofL has developed a major research initiative, becoming one of the nation's fastest growing programs in terms of growth in funding from the National Institutes of Health. The University of Louisville Hospital serves as the primary adult teaching hospital for the school's faculty, who also practice at the UofL Health Care Outpatient Center. The clinical care of UofL Health Care continues to receive recognition. UofL Hospital is the site of the nation's first Trauma Center, which recent accolades include being named the state's first certified stroke center and becoming the state's first nationally accredited breast care center. Helping to serve as a place for translating research advances into treatments and cures are the seven acute care hospitals that comprise the Louisville Medical Center. Each hospital is managed by a not-for-profit organization with a long history of providing compassionate care. Member institutions are Frazier Rehabilitation Center, Jewish Hospital, Kosair Children's Hospital, Norton Hospital, Norton Medical Pavilion, Rudd Heart and Lung Center and the University of Louisville Hospital, and UofL faculty provide clinical care at each of these facilities.

In the heart of downtown Louisville, the center offers the largest concentration of health care providers in Kentucky and the region, and one of the largest concentrations in the nation. It employs 12,000 healthcare workers and has a half-billion dollar payroll. It serves more than half a million patients each year from around the globe who come because of its reputation for leading-edge medical research and breakthrough medical treatments.

Importantly, UofL physicians not only care for patients at the UofL Hospital, they also practice at Jewish, Norton, Kindred, the Louisville VA Medical Center, Kosair, and other Louisville Medical Center facilities.

UofL Health Care is staffed with more than 500 physicians. University Hospital is the region's preeminent medical teaching and research hospital and plays a key role in ensuring the quality of health care in the community. It has developed a robot system for providing scarce specialty care to rural health partners. The hospital operates the area's only 24-hour Level I trauma and emergency center. Other key specialty services include women's health, digestive diseases, sleep disorders, bone marrow transplant, stroke center, and psychiatry. The James Graham Brown Cancer Center, that is part of UofL Healthcare, is the area's most comprehensive cancer care research and treatment facility.

Jewish Hospital is a 442-bed regional referral center. The hospital is also the flagship of the Jewish Hospital & St. Mary's HealthCare Network, a regional network of more than 35 health care locations throughout Kentucky and southern Indiana, including the Frazier Rehabilitation Hospital and the Rudd Heart and Lung Center, and encompassing nearly 1,700 beds and serving more than one million patients annually. Jewish Hospital is an internationally renowned specialty center, developing leading-edge advancements in heart and lung care, hand and microsurgery, rehabilitation medicine, neuroscience, occupational health, organ transplantation, outpatient care, plastic and aesthetic surgery, and primary care. It is among the top 10 cardiac centers (by volume) in the United States and is a leader in transplantation, performing all five solid organ transplants (heart, liver, lung, kidney and pancreas), as well as hand transplantation.

Frazier Rehab Downtown is a 135-bed hospital located on the Jewish Hospital Medical Campus. Frazier is committed to the development of programs, which combine traditional rehab with innovative therapy techniques. The facility stands 15 stories tall and houses world-class groundbreaking programs such as the Christopher and Dana Reeve NeuroRecovery Network, Spinal Cord Medicine Program and Locomotor Training Program. Therapy gyms located on each floor and patient rooms offer a full spectrum of 24-hours-a-day hospital services such as lab, x-ray, diagnostic imaging and respiratory therapy. The downtown facility offers both inpatient and outpatient rehabilitation and also offers a fitness and wellness facility, designed to help those with disabilities stay “fit for life.”

Jewish Hospital Heart Care, Rudd Heart and Lung Center and the Heart & Lung Institute boasts the region's only Accredited Chest Pain Center and a rich history of medical innovation and advancement. Offering the most complete range of diagnostic and interventional heart care services available anywhere in the region, Jewish Hospital's ranking and patient outcomes consistently exceed national averages. And Jewish provides a full spectrum of non-surgical options encompassing cardiac catheterizations, angioplasties, electrophysiology studies, pulmonary function testing and hyperbaric medicine.

Louisville VA Medical Center is an acute care hospital located approximately 4 miles from the main Medical Center Campus housing the inpatient population and multiple primary and subspecialty care outpatient facilities. Several specialized programs exist at the Louisville VA Hospital including the regional center for bariatric surgery; home based primary care providing personal home monitoring and telehealth management of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, congestive heart failure, and diabetes; and hospice and palliative care programs.

Norton Healthcare is a not-for-profit organization, which operates Norton Hospital, Kosair Children's Hospital, and the Norton Healthcare Pavilion in the Louisville Medical Center. It also operates three other hospitals in Louisville, and 16 managed community and rural hospitals in Kentucky, Indiana, and Illinois. Norton Healthcare also owns three physician practices, and is affiliated with Floyd Memorial Hospital and Health Services in New Albany, Indiana, Southern Indiana Medical Center, Charlestown, Indiana, and Regional Medical Center in Madisonville, Kentucky.

Norton Healthcare Pavilion, formerly Methodist Evangelical Hospital has served for more than a century, the people of Louisville and the surrounding region have turned to Norton Healthcare facilities for a full range of medical care. Through one of the area's most comprehensive healthcare networks, Norton Healthcare's integrated system bridges the life span, providing quality care to newborns, children, adults and the elderly.

Kosair Children's Hospital is a not-for-profit children's hospital operated by Norton Healthcare. Kosair has the area's highest-level neonatal intensive care unit, a children's burn unit, and specialists in all areas of pediatric care. Importantly, it has a Pediatric Clinical Research Center focusing on pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics of drug metabolism in children.

Office of Clinical Research Services and Support
Central Clinical Trials Office
University of Louisville Research Foundation (ULRF)
501 E. Broadway, Suite 210
Louisville, KY 40202
USA
502-852-1006
502-852-2610 (fax)
ocrss@louisville.edu
louisville.edu/research/ocrss/