Since 2020, you don't just take off from Switzerland's largest airport - you even return from there in good health! Five years ago in October, the University Hospital Zurich (USZ) opened its outpatient health center at Zurich Airport, in the new The Circle district. Five years of outpatient healthcare - a look back full of figures, volunteering, dialysis - and elephants.
One third of all outpatient visits at the USZ are now carried out at the airport site. And so a “millionaire” was recently crowned: since opening in October 2020, over one million patients have been treated at USZ Airport – in more than 20 specialties, from the vertigo center to the dialysis center to laboratory diagnostics.
A few figures on five years of USZ Airport:
- Over 240,000 blood samples – the equivalent of the blood volume of a medium-sized herd of elephants.
- 40,000 therapies in the medical day clinic – theoretically the entire population of the two largest airport neighbors, Kloten and Opfikon, was treated once.
- Around 26,000 dialysis treatments (blood cleansing) with a view of the runway – as many cycles as there are takeoffs and landings during the Zurich summer holidays.
- 18,000 anesthetics – enough to gently accompany the strongest Zürileu to the land of dreams several times over.
- More than 5,000 volunteer assignments that show that humanity and medicine go together wonderfully.
- 14 million square meters of floor area cleaned – the equivalent of around 2,000 football pitches.
The future of outpatient care
Behind these figures are employees who work tirelessly day in, day out – doctors, nurses and medical assistants, facility management and administrative staff, volunteers and many other professional groups. Together, they ensure that patients feel completely at ease and taken care of.
The airport location is a popular place to work—not least thanks to the outpatient services, which allow for regular working hours without night or weekend shifts. This is where interdisciplinary collaboration meets state-of-the-art infrastructure. The staff provide cutting-edge medicine and put their heart and soul into the well-being of patients – and can even smile while others fly off on vacation.
