Rush University Medical Center

Rush Medical College was chartered in on March 2, 1837, two days before the city of Chicago was chartered. The college opened with 22 students on December 4, 1843. It was the first health care institution in Chicago and one of the few medical schools west of the Alleghenies. Its founder, Daniel Brainard, named the school in honor of Benjamin Rush, the only physician with medical school training to sign the Declaration of Independence and who would later teach Meriwether Lewis basic medical skills for his expedition with William Clark to the Pacific Northwest. The general hospital associated with the medical college would be the first in Chicago.

The early Rush faculty, well known across the American frontier for its expertise, engaged in patient care, research and teaching, and was associated with a number of scientific developments and new clinical procedures. As the city grew, so did Rush's involvement with other developing institutions: St. Luke's Hospital, established in 1864; Presbyterian Hospital, which was begun at the urging of the Rush faculty in 1883; and the University of Chicago, with which Rush Medical College was affiliated and later united from 1898 to 1942.

In the early 1940s, Rush discontinued undergraduate education, but its library was maintained and its faculty continued to teach at the University of Illinois School of Medicine. In 1969, Rush Medical College reactivated its charter and merged with Presbyterian-St. Luke's Hospital, which itself had been formed through merger in 1956, to form Rush-Presbyterian-St. Luke's Medical Center. Rush University, which now includes colleges of medicine, nursing, health sciences and research training, was established in 1972. The Medical Center officially changed its name in September 2003 to Rush University Medical Center, to reflect the important role education and research play in its patient care mission.

In early 2021, management from both Lurie Children's and Rush University Medical Center (RUMC) announced that they would be forming a pediatric alliance to better deliver pediatric care throughout the region.[2] The alliance would officially start on February 1, 2021 and would align both inpatient and outpatient pediatric services at RUMC under the "Lurie Children's umbrella," known as "Lurie Children’s & Rush Advancing Children’s Health."[3][4]

Rush University Medical Center has 664 patient beds at its 14-story, 830,000-square-foot location on Chicago's Near West Side. The hospital is known for its butterfly-shaped Tower, designed to handle mass casualty events.[5] Rush offers more than 70 residency and fellowship programs in medical and surgical specialties and subspecialties. Rush is also the largest non-governmental employer on Chicago's near West Side, with nearly 10,000 employees and annual spending of over $550 million.[6]

In 2020, U.S. News and World Report included Rush University Medical Center on its Best Hospitals Honor Roll, ranking Rush No. 17 nationally.[11] In the same report, Rush ranked nationally in 11 adult specialties including No. 4 in Neurology & Neurosurgery and No. 5 in Orthopedics.[12]

All three Rush University System for Health hospitals earned the LGBTQ Healthcare Equality Leader designation from the Human Rights Campaign in 2020.[13] It was the second consecutive year that all three Rush hospitals received the designation and the twelfth time Rush University Medical Center had been designated an LGBTQ leader.

In 2019, Vizient, Inc. ranked Rush University Medical Center first among 93 U.S. academic medical centers in its 2019 Quality and Accountability Study.[14] It was the seventh consecutive time Rush was ranked among the top five in the annual study and the 11th time since the study began in 2005.

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