Bellevue Hospital Center

Bellevue Hospital Center
New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation
The original Bellevue Psychiatric Hospital building, now a men's homeless shelter
Geography
Location	462 First Avenue New York, New York 10016, United States
Organization
Care system	Medicaid, Medicare, Public
Hospital type	Teaching
Affiliated university	New York University
Services
Emergency department	Level I trauma center
Beds	1242 general, 339 psychiatric
History
Founded	March 31, 1736
Links
Website	http://www.nyc.gov/html/hhc/html/facilities/bellevue.shtml
Lists	Hospitals in the United States

An engraving from 1866 showing the city's first morgue, located in Bellevue

The "Cube", built in 1973 along the FDR Drive at the East River

Bellevue Hospital Center, most often referred to as "Bellevue", was founded on March 31, 1736 and is the oldest public hospital in the United States. Located on First Avenue in the Kips Bay neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City, Bellevue is famous from many literary, film and television references, and as the training ground for many of America's leaders in medicine. Affiliated with the New York University School of Medicine since 1968, Bellevue has been the site of many milestones in the history of medicine, from the establishment of the first ambulance service and first maternity ward, to Nobel Prize-winning cardiac catheterization laboratory.

Bellevue is exceptionally well known for its psychiatric facilities and its emergency department, being named New York's #1 hospital in Emergency Care by New York Magazine. It has opened a new ambulatory care building dedicated to serving over 300,000 outpatients a year as well as burn units for pediatric (children) and adult burn patients. The hospital serves as a primary referral center for cardiac catheterization, catheter-based treatment of heart rhythm disorders, cardiovascular surgery, neurosurgery, physical rehabilitation and Hansen's disease (leprosy).

As the flagship facility of New York City’s Health and Hospitals Corporation Bellevue is open to patients of all backgrounds irrespective of ability to pay. It handles nearly 500,000 outpatient clinic visits, 145,000 emergency visits (120,000 adult, 25,000 pediatric) and some 26,000 inpatients each year. More than 80 percent of Bellevue’s patients come from the city’s medically underserved populations. Today, the hospital occupies a 25-story patient care facility with a state of the art ICU, digital radiology communication and a new modern outpatient facility. The hospital has an attending physician staff of 1800 and an in-house staff of more than 1000. Lynda D. Curtis became Bellevue Hospital Center's Executive Director in 2005.

Bellevue Hospital is home to FDNY-EMS Battalion 8, formerly NYC*EMS Station 13.

Since 1998 the building which once served as the hospital's psychiatric facility has been used as a homeless intake center and a men's homeless shelter. Plans to redevelop it as a hotel and conference center connected to NYU Langone Medical Center fell through in April 2010.

Timeline

• 1799: First maternity ward in the United States
• 1808: First ligation of the femoral artery for an aneurysm
• 1811: New York City purchases Belle Vue farm and builds a new alms house.
• 1818: First ligation of the innominate artery.
• 1819: New York University faculty began to conduct clinical instruction at Bellevue Hospital.
• 1849: Amphitheatre for clinical teaching and surgery opened.
• 1854: Bellevue physicians promote the "Bone Bill," which legalized dissection of cadavers for anatomical studies.
• 1856: Bellevue physicians popularize the use of the hypodermic syringe.
• 1861: The Bellevue Hospital Medical College, the first medical college in New York with connections to a hospital, is founded.
• 1862: Austin Flint murmur is named for Austin Flint, prominent Bellevue Hospital cardiologist.
• 1866: Bellevue physicians are instrumental in developing New York City's sanitary code, the first in the world.
• 1867: One of the nation's first outpatient departments connected to a hospital (the "Bureau of Medical and Surgical Relief for the Out of Door Poor") is established at Bellevue.
• 1868: Bellevue physician Stephen Smith becomes first commissioner of public health in New York City. Smith initiated a national campaign for health vaccinations.
• 1869: Bellevue establishes the second hospital-based, emergency ambulance service in the United States.
• 1873: The nation's first nursing school based on Florence Nightingale's principles opens at Bellevue.
• 1874: Bellevue inaugurates the nation's first children's clinic.
• 1876: Bellevue's emergency pavilion, the first in the nation, opens.
• 1879: A pavilion for the insane is erected within hospital grounds—an approach considered revolutionary at the time.
• 1883: Bellevue initiates a residency training program that is still the model for surgical training worldwide.
• 1884: The Carnegie Laboratory, the nation's first pathology and bacteriology laboratory, is founded at Bellevue.
• 1888: The first American nursing school for men is established.
• 1889: Bellevue physicians are first to report that tuberculosis is a preventable disease.
• 1892: Bellevue establishes a dedicated unit for alcoholics.
• 1894: First successful operation of the abdomen for a pistol shot wound.
• 1903: In the midst of a tuberculosis epidemic, the Bellevue Chest Service is founded.
• 1911: Bellevue opens the nation's first ambulatory cardiac clinic.
• 1917: First ward for metabolic disorders in the Western Hemisphere.
• 1919: German spy and saboteur Fritz Joubert Duquesne escapes the hospital prison ward after having feigned paralysis for nearly two years.
• 1933: William Tillett discovers streptokinase, later used for the acute treatment of myocardial infarction.
• 1935: Public School 106, the first public school for the emotionally disturbed children located in a public hospital opened at Bellevue.
• 1938: Paul Zoll completes internship at Bellevue and later develops the first cardiac pacemaker.
• 1937: David Margolis begins work on WPA murals in entrance rotunda.
• 1939: Bellevue becomes the site of the world's first hospital catastrophe unit.
• 1940: The world's first cardiopulmonary laboratory is established at Bellevue by Andre Cournand and Dickinson Richards, who win the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1956.
• 1941: David Margolis completes series of 9 murals, titled Materials of Relaxation.
• 1952: Nation's first heart failure clinic opens, staffed by Eugene Braunwald
• 1960: Nina Starr Braunwald performs the first mitral valve replacement.
• 1962: Bellevue establishes the first intensive care unit in a municipal hospital.
• 1967: Bellevue physicians perform the first cadaver kidney transplant.
• 1970: Bellevue joins the New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation as one of 11 acute care hospitals.
• 1971: The first active immunization of serum hepatitis B is developed by Bellevue physicians.
• 1981: Bellevue is certified as an official heart station for cardiac emergencies.
• 1982: Designated as a micro-surgical reimplantation center for the City of New York.
• 1983: Designated as a level one trauma center.
• 1988: Recognized by the City's Emergency Medical Services as a head and spinal cord injury center.
• 1990: Establishes an accredited residency training program in Emergency Medicine.
• 1996: Bellevue plays a key role in the development of the "Triple Drug Cocktail" or HAART, a breakthrough in the treatment of AIDS.^{[citation needed]}
• 2001: Publication of the Bellevue Literary Review, the first literary magazine to arise from a medical center

References

Notes

Further reading

• Ofri, Danielle (2009). Singular Intimacies: Becoming a Doctor at Bellevue. Boston: Beacon Press. ISBN 9780807072523. 
• Harris, Mark (November 16, 2008). "Checkout Time at the Asylum". New York. http://nymag.com/news/features/52176/. 
• Holland, Julie (2009). Weekends at Bellevue: Nine Years on the Night Shift at the Psych ER. New York: Bantam Books. ISBN 9780553807660. 
• Nolen, William A. (1990). The Making of a Surgeon. Denver: Mid-List Press. ISBN 0-922811-46-6. 

External links

• Bellevue Hospital page at NYU Medical Center's site
• Bellevue Hospital Center Web page
• NYU School of Medicine / Library and Archives with Bellevue related collections
• Is It Checkout Time at Bellevue Hospital? New York Magazine article
• New York Times feature article on the Bellevue Literary Review