Bellevue Hospital Center



Bellevue Hospital Center, most often referred to as simply "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, the facility's name is well-known to people elsewhere from the many literary, film and television references, where "Bellevue" most always refers to the hospital's psychiatric facilities.

Affiliated since 1968 with the New York University School of Medicine (which also has its own hospital just north of Bellevue), Bellevue has been the training ground for many of America's leaders in medicine, as well as 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 is well known for its psychiatric facilities and as a triage center during disasters. 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, 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 1800 and an in-house staff of more than 1000. Lynda D. Curtis became Bellevue Hospital Center's Executive Director in 2005.

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 City 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
 * 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.
 * 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 teaching 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.