City: Memphis, TN

Category: Health Care

Telephone: (901) 545-7100

Address: 877 Jefferson Avenue

Description: The Med, as everybody calls this medical center, started in the 1980s as a partnership between the Shelby County government and the University of Tennessee. They wanted to organize a new kind of medical center, an academic and research hospital that would provide the most acute care possible. The Med, with 321 beds, is part of the training ground for UT and serves as the county’s safety-net hospital to the poor. It’s also home to eight Centers of Excellence, including its Level III trauma center, where the most seriously injured accident victims from a 150-mile radius are airlifted for emergency care. The best known of the eight centers is the Elvis Presley Memorial Trauma Center, where saving lives is a daily miracle. It was established in 1983 by surgeon Timothy Fabian, who remains medical director to this day. The center is staffed around the clock with on-site trauma surgeons, nurses, anesthesiologists, and other service personnel, all of them specially trained in severe trauma care. The newborn center at The Med is one of the oldest and largest newborn intensive-care units in the United States. More than 1,300 premature or critically ill newborns are treated here each year. It is one of only 14 member institutions of the National Research Network, which is supported by the National Institute of Health’s Child Development Program. Since its founding in 1968, this facility has successfully treated more than 45,000 premature babies, some weighing as little as 1 pound. In general, The Med delivers more than 5,000 babies each year. More than a quarter of the mothers are considered high risk before birth and are therefore treated at the hospital’s high-risk obstetrics center. This includes the 1,500-plus referrals of women with complicated pregnancies that The Med gets each year. The 14-bed burn center treats adults and children with severe burns and cares for more than 300 patients a year. It also operates a skin bank used for transplants. The Med’s wound-care center is an outpatient facility that treats slow-healing injuries, such as diabetic foot ulcers, and provides hyperbaric oxygen therapy. The center also has treatment vans that provide wound care to patients in area nursing homes.