Kansas Medical Center history

The story of KU’s hospital in Rosedale began in 1894 when Doctor Simeon Bishop Bell (above), a Wyandotte County physician and real estate speculator, tried to bestow $75,000 in cash and land on the University.

When acceptance finally came in 1905, it was only after Bell had upped his pledge to $100,000, at which point construction began on the first Eleanor Taylor Bell Memorial Hospital.

First Bell.The first Eleanor Taylor Bell Memorial Hospital, opened in 1906 and built at a cost of $25,000, contained 35 beds.

Kansas City General Hospital (KCGH) Attending Physicians - South Wing 1908

If a meager budget, inadequate facilities and no statewide consensus as to whether the institution should even remain in Rosedale were not enough to dampen the Medical School’s spirits, Abraham Flexner’s 1910 exposé may have been.

Even the 1911 completion of a second and larger Eleanor Taylor Bell Memorial Hospital on Goat Hill could not silence the critics.

As KU historian Clifford Griffin put it, “All that the Medical School’s leaders had was a small, inadequate, understaffed school with a poor reputation.” In the wake of the 1918 Kansas gubernatorial election, however, the KU School of Medicine found that it finally had an influential champion.

Upon taking office in 1919, Governor Allen summoned Doctor Mervin T. Sudler, the School’s associate dean and day-to-day administrator, to Topeka.

But by May 24, 1920, Allen was convinced he could persuade the legislature to support moving the Med School to the Kern tract, provided that KU first find a way to acquire the property without using state funds.

Built at a cost of $235,000, this four-story, column-fronted brick edifice received its first patients on June 26, 1924.

In 1928, Truman, then the presiding judge of the Jackson County Court, campaigned for and saw passage of a bond issue that led to construction of the Rural Jackson County Emergency Hospital on the grounds of the farm.

1948 - Dean Franklin D. Murphy, M.D., pitched a plan to state legislators to vastly expanded the Medical Center facilities.

The health system’s first organ transplant, performed in 1969, was a kidney transplant and the system’s 5,000th organ transplant was also a kidney transplant.

1971 - KU extended its reach in Kansas, establishing a community-based clinical campus in Wichita.

The region's largest blood and marrow transplant program, established in 1977, offers lifesaving procedures for leukemia, lymphoma and other blood cancers.

On May 18, 1979, more than 2,000 people gathered in Kansas City, Kansas, for the new $58 million facility’s dedication.

The hospital marked an important milestone in 1998 when it became an independent hospital authority, receiving no state funding and no longer part of the School of Medicine.

Later in 2005, plans call for the Eleanor Taylor Building, now housing Information Resources and Medical Information Management, to be rededicated as Eleanor Taylor Bell.

The Center for Advanced Heart Care later opens in 2006.

2007 - The school celebrated the opening of the $52 million Robert E. Hemenway Life Sciences Innovation Center, attracting millions in grant funding and some of the nation's top researchers.

2008 - The Institute for Advancing Medical Innovation was established to hasten the discovery and development of new drugs and medical devices.

2011 - A new campus opened in Salina, advancing the mission to produce primary-care doctors for underserved areas.

In 2012, the hospital becomes the official healthcare provider of the Kansas City Chiefs.

The University of Kansas Hospital joined with the University of Kansas Physicians in 2017 to form The University of Kansas Health System.

The facility in Kansas City, Kansas, opens in 2019.

The December 2021 opening of levels 8, 9 and 10 in Cambridge Tower A on the main campus in Kansas City adds 100 rooms for patients.