VA Medical Center

The Baltimore VA Medical Center is a modern 324 bed facility, opened adjacent to University Hospital.

Both hospitals are conveniently connected by a walkway which facilitates integration of educational, research and clinical activities.

For more information, see the VA Maryland Health Care System.

With its fully digitized radiology department, the VA was the first filmless medical center in the world. It also features the VA's Computerized Patient Record System (CPRS), which gives residents ready access to clinical data, discharge summaries and laboratory results on computer monitors.

The Baltimore facility is one of only a few VA Medical Centers in the country with two large federally funded programs in geriatrics — Geriatric Research Education Clinical Center (GRECC) and a Claude D. Pepper Older Americans Independence Center. It is currently ranked as one of the top VA Medical Centers in VA-funded research.

Medical Input Units

The general medical services are organized in a team call system. 

Each of the 4 general medical teams (Green, Yellow, Purple and Orange Teams) consists of 1 resident, 2 interns, 1 sub-intern and 2 medical students, and are capped at a team census of 20.

There are 2 critical care teams: the CCU/telemetry unit (Blue Team) and the MICU service (Pink Team), each staffed with 2 residents and 3 interns.

Call in the CCU and MICU is every 4th day with interns staying until 9 pm and upper level residents staying overnight. A Night Float intern cares for patients with the overnight resident in the CCU and MICU.

On the general medicine teams, call is also every 4th night until 9 pm with no one staying overnight. A full Night Team system allows the on-call general medicine teams and the on-call interns in the MICU or CCU to take their last admission at 6 PM and leave the hospital after signing-out their service at 9 pm. The Day Float and Night Teams ensure that residents work less than 80 hours/week on average and have 8-10 hours off between duty shifts. Interns get experience in the CCU and MICU at night when on the night float team. The upper level resident of each service directs the daily clinical activities and plays a key role in teaching first year residents and students. Attending rounds are conducted seven days each week.