Academic Medicine and the Power of Partnership

Academic medicine grants public access to new academic knowledge that greatly improves the quality of health care and patients' lives. It does so through the fulfillment of three integrated, interdependent missions:

• to achieve medical breakthroughs;
• to educate each new generation of physicians; and  
• through these physicians, to bring that new knowledge to patients with critical, complex illnesses that can be treated only with breakthrough therapies.

In Minnesota, academic medicine is embodied in the partnership between the University of Minnesota and Fairview Health Services. The University achieves medical breakthroughs. But to truly make a difference, these discoveries must be applied. And the more rapidly and broadly they can be applied, the more new therapies and cures can reach those in need—saving lives and improving health.

The partnership, formed in 1997, includes:

• the six schools and colleges within the University of Minnesota Academic Health Center (Medical School, School of Public Health, School of Nursing, College of Pharmacy, School of Dentistry, and College of Veterinary Medicine) that educate and train the next generation of researchers, physicians, and other health care professionals;
• University of Minnesota Physicians, a 650-member group practice that includes members of the Medical School's faculty who apply clinical breakthroughs to exceptional specialty care for patients at the University hospitals and clinics and throughout the community; and
• Fairview Health Services, which owns and operates the University hospitals and provides a continuum of care — from its community-based hospitals and clinics to the breakthrough treatments available at the University of Minnesota Medical Center, Fairview, and the University of Minnesota Children's Hospital, Fairview.

This coalescence of basic and applied science is what sets the University-Fairview partnership apart: an academic institution devoted to discovery joining forces with a broad base of community hospitals whose patients need the best the brightest research minds can offer. Through this clinical network, the benefits of this academic-medicine partnership extend throughout the region—in many cases, with worldwide impact. Indeed, since the partnership began nearly a decade ago, the University of Minnesota Medical Center, Fairview, has achieved several world firsts in living-donor transplantation and stem-cell therapeutics, and members of the partnership have discovered and applied breakthrough treatments in a wide variety of specialties.