When Wishard Memorial Hospital established primary care outpatient clinics in 1970, there was an explicit mission statement that these clinics would not only provide primary care to inner-city residents, but they would be a laboratory for clinical research.

Beginning in 1981, the General Medicine Clinics were reorganized into four firms to which physicians were randomly assigned yearly and new patients were sequentially assigned to physicians with open panels. Subsequent RCTs showed that there were no differences in physicians, physician practice patterns, or patients’ demographic or clinical characteristics between firms.

In the mid-1990s, the primary care clinics (both adult medicine and pediatrics) of Wishard Hospital and Indiana University’s commercial practice merged to form IU Medical Group-Primary Care (IUMG-PC), increasing the number of sites in Central Indiana to 18( Table 1). IUMG-PC maintained its commitment to research, and in 2000 established ResNet which had dedicated research assistants to recruit patients for multiple studies. Since 2000, ResNet has been involved in more than 40 studies supported by over $15 million in extramural grants. In these studies, ResNet has recruited more than 7,000 patients, approximately 68% of those patients contacted, a remarkable figure considering that two-thirds of those approached were African-American or Hispanic (see ResNet Project List). Since the inception of Indiana University’s primary care "research laboratory," its research has resulted in more than 250 peer reviews journal articles (see ResNet Reference List). Importantly, IUMG-PC has its own Federal-Wide Assurance and has a business agreement with ResNet to recruit subjects for research projects. This allows ResNet research assistants access to patient data for assessing patient eligibility while maintaining compliance with HIPAA regulations.