IU Health Ball Memorial Hospital is a community hospital serving as a tertiary referral center and teaching hospital for east central Indiana. Its referral base is approximately 500,000 spanning a 10-county area. This includes Muncie, a city of 75,000 with a university community of 20,000, located approximately 50 miles northeast of Indianapolis.
IU Health Ball Memorial Hospital was also recently named as one of the top 100 hospitals in the United States in the teaching hospital category.
Active in medical education for more than 70 years, the hospital provides internships and residency programs for more than 60 house staff members representing family medicine, internal medicine and transitional year.
The hospital is affiliated with IU School of Medicine, providing didactic and clinical experiences throughout all four years of the medical student's training. Residents and faculty are actively involved in teaching medical students.
The hospital's medical staff consists of more than 300 physicians, representing more than 50 specialties. Supported by the hospital's commitment to excellence, the medical staff has strong backing from the hospital board and administration, which has historically provided diagnostic and treatment capability enhancement.
IU Health Ball Memorial Hospital's library has 10,000 volumes and subscribes to more than 900 journals. Free, computerized literature searches, internet access and free photocopying are available to residents, who have ample work areas with personal telephones and dictation equipment.
Originally constructed in 1929, the facility has been extensively updated in recent years. A five-story Outpatient Medical Pavilion opened in the 1990s to provide services such as ambulatory surgery, physician offices offering a variety of medical specialties, and resident offices and conference rooms. The IU Health Ball Memorial Cancer Center became fully operational in 2002, and a re-designed Emergency Department opened in 2005.
The most recent addition to IU Health Ball Memorial Hospital is the South Tower (with new critical care units, progressive care, step-down units, and medical floors), which opened in early 2009.
Our Learning Center, funded by an endowment by the Janice B. Fisher family, is located in the lower level of the Edmund F. Ball Medication Education Center. The Learning Center supports the mission of the organization by promoting patient safety and wellness as well as improving the health status of the people of east central Indiana and surrounding areas through community and healthcare provider education.
Full, online medical journal and textbook capabilities are available. Each resident is issued a laptop computer for instant access to all resources.