Initially the campus was based in the San Juan de Dios Hospital, using the infrastructure of the hospital's psychiatric wing. The emblem of the institution bears the dome of its first grounds at the hospital. At the beginning it served as the medical school of an established university known as UACA. However, in 1999 the medical school separated from its partnership with UACA and changed its name to UCIMED establishing itself as an independent institution. Three years later in March 2003, the National System of Accreditation in Higher Education, which monitors and verifies that higher education excellence standards are met nationally, granted UCIMED its accreditation in Medicine. UCIMED and UCR school of medicine were the only two institutions at the time to meet this standards.