History

building 500The University’s categorical training track has long been respected as one of the nation’s best, routinely placing residents in competitive fellowships throughout the country. The advent of the primary care movement and its incipient training needs were anticipated many years ago. With a formal training track that is more than 20 years old, the primary care residency is one of the nation’s most recognized programs of its type. More recently, the University of Colorado anticipated the hospitalist wave, introducing the first dedicated Hospitalist Training Program in the United States. Finally, we have implemented a formal basic science/clinical research program that will prepare residents for successful careers in academic medicine. 

In 2007 the University of Colorado Hospital, our flagship hospital, fully transitioned to its new home on the Anschutz Medical Campus. This medical campus is the world's only completely new education, research, and patient care facility and is the largest academic health center between Chicago and the west coast, north of Texas. This cutting-edge health care campus fosters collaboration among students, researchers, and clinicians. Campus architecture and state-of-the-art technology bridge education and research with two world-class hospitals: University of Colorado Hospital and Children’s Hospital Colorado. The Denver VA Medical Center completed its move to the Anschutz Medical Campus in the summer of 2018, competing the 20-year vision for the inpatient components of the campus. ​ The campus is home to the schools and colleges of Medicine, Nursing, Dental Medicine, Pharmacy, and Public Health.

This new campus continues the tradition of excellence in clinical care and education that has long been established since the founding of the Department of Medicine at the University of Colorado in 1883. Some notable aspects of this history include the first description of:

  • T-cells
  • ARDS
  • Use of home oxygen to improve survival in secondary pulmonary hypertension
  • "pink puffers” and “blue bloaters”
  • Septic shock
  • Central pontine myelinolysis
  • Fractional excretion of sodium
  • The anion gap
  • Progesterone receptor and its role in cancer
  • Directly Observed Therapy (DOTS), now the method of choice for control of TB worldwide​