UNIVERSITY MEDICAL SERVICE history

Cancer researcher extraordinaire Doctor Renato Dulbecco, a founding member of the Salk Institute and 1975 Nobel Prize winner, joins the UC San Diego faculty.

1976: John R. Haaga, MD, pioneered the use of computed tomography (CT) to guide biopsies, nerve blocks, abscess drainage and cancer treatment, significantly reducing the need for patients to have open surgery.

1978: Research technique to record accurate cardiac output was developed by Herman K. Hellerstein, MD, Anthony Bacevice, MD, and Peter Katona, MD.

1979: Jeffrey Ponsky, MD, and Michael Gauderer, MD, performed the first percutaneous endoscopic gastrostomy on infants, safely inserting a feeding tube in a minimally invasive manner in a baby’s stomach.

1980: Irwin Merkatz, MD, conducted the first clinical trials of ritodrine, the first Food and Drug Administration-approved drug to inhibit pre-term labor, at UH MacDonald Women’s Hospital.

UC San Diego Medical Center Emergency Room ambulance service, 1981-83.

Rosemary Stevens, “ ‘A Poor Sort of Memory’: Voluntary Hospitals and Government before the Depression,” The Milbank Memorial Fund Quarterly, Health and Society 60 (1982): 558.

Medicare incorporated a prospective payment system in 1983, with federal programs paying a preset amount for a specific diagnosis in the form of Diagnostic Related Groups, or DRGs.

1986: Arthur Zinn, MD, Douglas Kerr, MD, Charles Hoppel, MD, published the first description and detailed characterization of a defect (in the enzyme fumarase) in the famous pathway required for energy metabolism, the Krebs cycle.

Starr, The Social Transformation of American Medicine; Charles E. Rosenberg, The Care of Strangers: The Rise of America’s Hospital System(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987).

1988: Herbert Meltzer, MD, conducted the first human trials of clozapine and established it as an effective medication for treatment-resistant schizophrenic patients.

1989: Joseph Calabrese, MD, in collaboration with researchers at Case Western Reserve University, launched groundbreaking studies that show the effectiveness of anticonvulsants and atypical antipsychotics in treating bipolar disorder.

1990: Anthony Maniglia, MD, was awarded the first of five patents leading to technology for developing the totally implantable cochlear implant.

1994: Alfred and Norma Lerner Tower & the Samuel Mather Pavilion opened on the University Circle campus through a gift of $10 million.

Some of the larger not-for-profit corporations have bailed out public facilities through lease arrangements, such as the one between the Daughters of Charity’s Seton Medical Center and the public Brackenridge Hospital in Austin, Texas, that occurred in 1995.

Then in 1997, the Balanced Budget Act decreased Medicare payments to hospitals by $115 billion over five years, including a projected $17 billion reduction in Medicare payments to hospitals.

1998: UH became the site of one of the world’s first intraoperative magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans.

2002: Pamela Davis, MD, PhD, and Michael Konstan, MD, performed the first-in-human clinical trial of a non-viral gene therapy approach in patients with cystic fibrosis using DNA nanoparticles.

2004: Robert J. Maciunas, MD, was the first surgeon in North America to treat Tourette syndrome with deep brain stimulation.

Loma Linda University and Loma Linda University Medical Center, as it is known today, proudly celebrated its 100 year anniversary in 2005.

2006: The UH Medical House Calls program is established, in collaboration with Internal Medicine and Nursing, bringing primary care services to homebound seniors who otherwise would not have access to care.

2008: Faruk H. Örge, MD, was the first in Ohio to use endoscopic and microsurgical techniques to drain excess fluid from the eye in infants and young children born with glaucoma.

2009: The Brain Tumor and Neuro-Oncology Center, under the direction of Andrew Sloan, MD, pioneered a minimally invasive, MRI-guided laser system to treat previously inoperable brain tumors.

2010: Pediatric urologists Jonathan Ross, MD, and Edward Cherullo, MD, performed one of the world’s first pediatric single-site nephrectomies.

UC San Diego Health achieves Stage 7 of electronic medical record (EMR) adoption — a ranking devised by the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) Analytics group and achieved by only 1.1 percent of United States hospitals in 2011.

2012: Jonathan Miller, MD, performed the first temporoparietoocipital disconnection in the United States, a procedure to remove tiny, non-functioning, sections of the brain where seizures originate, providing a cure for intractable epilepsy.

UC San Diego Health’s Level 1 Trauma Center is a model for trauma centers around the world, 2014.

Doctor Alice Yu, MD, PhD, professor emeritus, is among a group of UC San Diego scientists instrumental in developing the pediatric cancer drug Unituxin, which received FDA approval in 2015.

2016: University Hospitals is the first in Ohio and the region to offer proton therapy to treat cancer.

Sanford said that the donation was inspired by the teachings of the Dalai Lama, who he met with privately when His Holiness gave a commencement address at UC San Diego in 2017.