In House M.D., which fictional hospital department does Gregory House head?

In House M.D., Gregory House heads the Department of Diagnostic Medicine.

The department investigates rare, complicated, or unexplained illnesses that have resisted ordinary diagnosis. House leads a small team of fellows through a process involving differential diagnoses, tests, observation, and frequent revision of hypotheses.

Diagnostic medicine is a real area of medical practice, although the show presents it in a highly compressed and dramatic way. In real hospitals, difficult cases may involve multidisciplinary teams rather than a single physician and a small group solving every mystery.

House’s department also gives the series its distinctive structure. Each episode typically begins with a patient whose symptoms appear unrelated, then follows the team as they identify patterns and eliminate possible causes. The department is not the same as emergency medicine, infectious diseases, or neurosurgery, even when cases involve those specialties.