Being a clinical centre which offers the highest level of care (maximum care), about 35,000 patients from all over Pomerania are treated as in-patients in the University Hospital's 805 beds and more than 64,000 as out-patients every year. The characteristic feature of Greifswald's University Hospital is the fact that the special cases of the region are treated here. But the clinics and institutes also function as a hospital for the City of Greifswald.

Due to this it is already possible for approximately 1,300 students of the Medical Faculty to face the demands of their later working life during their training.

This close connection to practical experience has also found expression in research and patient care. The special focus on “Community Medicine” which is unique in Germany deals with the population’s current state of health from the medical and social perspective. Furthermore, it emphasises the resulting conclusions for medical care and prevention. Other main areas of research and teaching are molecular medicine, cardiology, pharmacology and functional genomics.

In order to fulfil tasks even more efficiently, the institutions that have been distributed all over the City so far are to be united in a new University Hospital, which will then be the most up-to-date medical institution in Germany as from 2008. In March 2004 some of the first clinics moved into the new buildings in the Sauerbruchstrasse.