The history of University Hospitals Cleveland Medical Center is linked to the history of Cleveland. Founded in 1866, we were nurtured and supported by Cleveland’s great industrial families of the late 19th and early 20th centuries – the same families that played key roles in the development of the city’s noted civic and cultural institutions, including the Cleveland Museum of Art, The Cleveland Orchestra, and The Cleveland Foundation.
Among the forward-looking thinkers in our early history was industrialist Samuel Mather, who served as a trustee for an astounding 47 years, including 32 years as chairman. In 1891, Mather visited the fledgling Johns Hopkins hospital and medical school. He returned to Cleveland convinced of the value of an academic medical mission joined with patient care. He understood the synergy created in an academic medical center that brings together the power of healing, teaching and discovery, and he recognized that the future of great medicine lay in the academic medical center model.
This vision for University Hospitals led in 1895 to our formal ties with what is now the Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine. As an affiliate of the medical school, we grew to become one of the nation’s great centers of academic medicine and the region’s leading provider of high quality health care. To the people of Greater Cleveland, we came to exemplify hope, mercy and humanity.