The University of Virginia Health System is an academic health care center associated with the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. The health system includes a medical center (with main hospital, children's hospital, and clinic network), school of medicine, school of nursing, and health sciences library. The health system provides inpatient and outpatient care and patient education and conducts medical research and education. Based in Charlottesville, the Health System also operates satellite locations throughout Virginia, in Albemarle, Amherst, Augusta, Campbell, Fluvanna, Louisa, Nelson, and Orange counties. The first medical degrees granted by UVA were awarded in 1828. The University of Virginia Hospital, designed by architect Paul J. Pelz, opened in 1901. The UVA Health System's patient care, research and medical education are frequently ranked highly by several ranking systems. In 2016 and 2017, U.S. News & World Report ranked UVAHS as the number one hospital in Virginia. History The UVA Health System's history can be traced to the founding of the University of Virginia in 1819. At the first meeting of the university's Board of Visitors in 1819, a School of Medicine was authorized. The University of Virginia School of Medicine – the 10th medical school in the U.S. – officially opened in March 1825 with a single professor, Dr. Robley Dunglison, recruited by Thomas Jefferson to UVA from London. More than 75 years later, UVA opened its first hospital in March 1901 with 25 beds and three operating rooms. A few months later, the hospital established a training program for nurses, which would grow into the UVA School of Nursing, formally established in 1956. Until 1960, the UVA Hospital served its African American patients in segregated wards located in the hospital's basement level. Local African American activists, including hospital employees such as Randolph Lewis White, worked with the NAACP to advocate both for desegregated wards and better labor conditions for the hospital's African American staff members. White and others lobbied state and local officials, and eventually threatened a hospital worker's strike, and then a lawsuit, eventually succeeding in having black patients fully integrated into the previously all-white wards. The 8,000 books purchased by Jefferson to create the University Library included 710 books on the medical sciences. UVA's medical literature moved to the Medical School building in 1929. Its current home was dedicated in April 1976. The UVA Health Services Foundation was founded in 1979 to handle billing as well as