Rising above you is UAB Hospital, also known as University Hospital, a 1,207-bed tertiary hospital and academic health science center in Birmingham, Alabama. This is the flagship property of the University of Alabama at Birmingham and the UAB Health System, part of the University of Alabama System. As you look up at its façades, remember that it serves as the only ACS-verified Level I Trauma Center in Alabama. It is Birmingham’s largest employer, with a staff of over 20,000, and includes clinics, an eye hospital, and affiliations with other health care facilities throughout the state.
Inside these doors it functions as the primary teaching hospital for the UAB School of Medicine. In 2006 U.S. News & World Report ranked seven of its specialty programs among the top 50 of 5,189 hospitals nationwide, with five of those seven in the top 25. That recognition made UAB Hospital one of only 176 institutions studied and the only hospital in Alabama on the magazine’s "Best Hospitals" list. Its seven ranked specialties included rheumatology (6th), cardiology and heart surgery (14th), gynaecology (14th), kidney disease (17th) and oncology (23rd). Beyond these doors sit the adjacent clinics, the eye hospital, and the rest of the sprawling UAB campus.