Em. Med. Annual Report 2011 - Hennepin County Medical Center

Ernie Ruiz, MD stands before his
portrait, commissioned on the opening
of the Ernie Ruiz Emergency Medicine
Residentʼs Library, 2006
privileges and resources provided to the existing
specialties. A crisis was needed to make a change.
The race riots in Cincinnati, Ohio in the late sixties
provided a crisis. The University of Cincinnati's
Cincinnati General Hospital ER was crowded with
patients who perceived their care as poor and
were dissatisfied with long waits. A young internal
medicine staff physician, Herbert Flessa, was
directed by hospital leaders to come up with a
plan. He saw a short and long-term solution if a
residency in emergency medicine could be
established. He was joined by a young
neurosurgeon, H. Paul Lewis, in drawing up a
curriculum and making arrangements for such a
residency. They were unable to find a path to
official recognition but went ahead anyway and
recruited the first resident, Bruce Janiak, in 1970.
This was nine years after James Mills started his
plan. Flessa, Lewis and other staff assigned to the
ER by the hospital were not dedicated to the
practice of emergency medicine and left to
practice their own specialties. The residency
struggled along for a few years and almost
2:00 am