City: Baltimore, MD

Category: Health Care

Telephone: (410) 328-8667, (800) 492-5538

Address: 22 South Green St.

Description: Calling itself “Maryland’s other great hospital” in deference to the more widely recognized Johns Hopkins Hospital, Maryland’s largest hospital serves more than 250,000 patients a year. Established in 1807, the affiliated University of Maryland School of Medicine is the nation’s fifth-oldest medical school. In 1823 the medical school built the Baltimore Infirmary, which later became University Hospital. Just blocks from Camden Yards and the Inner Harbor, the hospital has 747 beds, served by 5,500 employees. A private, nonprofit teaching hospital, the first teaching hospital in the state, the University of Maryland Medical Center often assists with referrals and the handling of difficult cases from the region’s doctors and smaller hospitals. The R. Adams Cowley Shock Trauma Center was the first of its kind for providing critical care to those in immediate need of medical attention, using state police helicopters and the region’s ambulance systems. The Greenebaum Cancer Center opened in 1996 and serves thousands of people in the region suffering from all types of cancer. The Gudelsky Building, featuring a unique 12-story atrium to provide comfort and solace to patients and their loved ones, transcends the typical hospital environment, while rooms in the building are mostly private. Specialties include neurosurgical care, cardiac care, transplant surgery, and cutting-edge research and surgical advancements, including pioneering work in transplants, video-assisted surgery, and the Gamma Knife, a radiological procedure that requires no surgery to destroy brain tumors and repair vascular malformations. The hospital made news and history in November 2009 by completing a four-way kidney exchange involving eight patients from four states.