In 1931, the hospital and medical school were officially dedicated on April 20 and the Private Diagnostic Clinic (Duke's in-house physician system) was organized on September 16.

[11] Currently the oldest continuously operating facility in the United States, this center has pioneered long-term studies of health problems among seniors.

In 1966, Duke became the first medical center in the world to offer radio consultations with physicians in developing countries.

This program, called Med-Aid (short for Medical Assistance for Isolated Doctors), met the critical needs of the physicians who lacked proper treatment.

In 1969, the first recorded studies of human's abilities to function and work at pressures equal to a 1,000-foot (300 m) deep sea dive were conducted in the hyperbaric chamber.

In the 1990s, the medical research at Duke reached the forefront for the detection of ailments that can be treated with a larger success rate.

In 1992, Duke's cancer center became the first hospital to develop an outpatient bone marrow transplant program.

With this extraordinary partnership, the NIH became the first organization to offer a joint graduate degree program with a major university.

In December 2019, a team at the hospital became the first in the United States to transplant an adult heart into a recipient through a process known as donation after circulatory death.

[19] In 2019, Duke Regional Hospital began a major expansion project on its emergency department and behavioral health unit.

[21] In September 2021, doctors at Duke University Hospital completed the first heart donation after circulatory death on a child.