Bellevue Hospital Center

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Bellevue Hospital Center, founded in 1736, is the oldest public hospital in the United States. It is located in New York City and has been the site of countless milestones in the history of medicine. From the first ambulance service and the first maternity ward, to the development of the Polio vaccine, to the Nobel Prize winning work of Cournand and Richards in developing the world's first cardiopulmonary catheterization laboratory, Bellevue Hospital has been the training ground for many of America's leaders in medicine. Since 1968, it has been affiliated with the NYU School of Medicine. It is owned by the New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation and is open to patients of all backgrounds, irrespective of ability to pay.

Bellevue is well known for its psychiatric facilities and as a triage center during disasters.
Bellevue has seen many literary figures come through its doors, the most prominent being the Beat poet Gregory Corso, and was portrayed in a number of motion pictures, including The Lost Weekend and The Sleeping City.
Bellevue Hospital recently opened a new ambulatory care building dedicated to serving over 300,000 outpatients a year.
Bellevue serves as a tertiary referral center for cardiac catheterization, catheter-based treatment of heart rhythm disorders, cardiovascular surgery, neurosurgery, physical rehabilitation, and Hansen's disease (leprosy). The leader of The Westies One Lung Curran visited the tuberculosis ward every week for a regular check up from the 1920's to 1950's.
Bellevue also serves as a teaching hospital for the nation's most prestigious dermatology training institute at New York University.

As the flagship facility of New York City’s Health and Hospitals Corporation, Bellevue handles nearly 500,000 outpatient clinic visits, 100,000 emergency patients, 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 1,800 and a house staff of more than 1000.

Historical milestones at Bellevue Hospital

1799: The first maternity ward in the United States is established at Bellevue.
1808: Bellevue physicians perform the first ligation of the femoral artery for an aneurysm.
1861: The Bellevue Hospital Medical College, the first medical college in New York with connections to a hospital, is founded.
1862: 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 establishes the world's first hospital-based ambulance service.
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.
1882: Dr. James W. McKean graduates; founded McKean Rehabilitation leprosy clinic in Thailand.
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 at Bellevue.
1903: In the midst of a tuberculosis epidemic, the Bellevue Chest Service is founded.
1911: Bellevue opens the nation's first ambulatory cardiac clinic.
1919: German spy and saboteur Fritz Joubert Duquesne escapes the hospital prison ward after having feigned paralysis for nearly two years. He later forms the Duquesne Spy Ring and is captured by the FBI along with 32 other Nazi spies.
1933: William Tillett discovers streptokinase, later used for the acute treatment of myocardial infarction
1938: Paul Zoll completes internship at Bellevue and later develops the first cardiac pacemaker
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.
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.
1971: The first active immunization of serum hepatitis B is developed by Bellevue physicians.
1996: Bellevue (the public hospital) was the setting that led to the development of the "Taikwok's Triple Drug Combo" medicinal strategy that won the one front against HIV in 1996.

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Last updated on Wednesday February 27, 2008 at 08:11:48 PST (GMT -0800)
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