Bellevue Hospital

Coordinates: 40°44′21″N 73°58′31″W / 40.7393°N 73.9753°W / 40.7393; -73.9753
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Bellevue Hospital Center
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"Bellevue Hospital Center" redirects here. For the hospital in Lebanon, see Bellevue Medical Center.
Bellevue Hospital
Level I trauma center
Beds844 (2015)[3]
HelipadEast 34th Street Heliport (IATA: TSS)
History
OpenedMarch 31, 1736 (288 years ago) (1736-03-31) [2]
Links
Websitewww.nychealthandhospitals.org/bellevue
ListsHospitals in New York State
Other linksHospitals in Manhattan

Bellevue Hospital (officially NYC Health + Hospitals/Bellevue and formerly known as Bellevue Hospital Center) is a hospital in

FDNY EMS
Station 08, formerly NYC EMS Station 13.

Historically, Bellevue was so frequently associated with its treatment of mentally ill patients that "Bellevue" became a local pejorative

inpatient services. The hospital contains a 25-story patient care facility and has an attending physician staff of 1,200 and an in-house staff
of about 5,500.

Bellevue is a safety net hospital, providing healthcare for individuals regardless of their insurance status or ability to pay. It handles over half a million patient visits each year.[3]

History

An engraving from 1866 showing the city's first morgue, located in Bellevue
The administration building in 1950
The original psychiatric hospital building

Founding

Bellevue traces its origins to the city's first permanent almshouse, a two-story brick building completed in 1736 on the city common, now City Hall Park.[5][6]

In 1798, the city purchased Belle Vue farm, a property near the East River several miles north of the settled city, which had been used to quarantine the sick during a series of yellow fever outbreaks. The hospital was formally named Bellevue Hospital in 1824.[7][8]

Bellevue Hospital - NYC

By 1787,

metonym for psychiatric hospitals. Mark Harris in New York called it "the Chelsea Hotel of the mad".[4]

Bellevue initiated a

alcoholics.[citation needed
]

City reorganization

In 1902, the administrative Bellevue and Allied Hospitals organization were formed by the city, under president John W. Brannan. B&AH also included

Harlem Hospital, and Fordham Hospital.[9] B&AH opened doors to female and black physicians.[10] In the midst of a tuberculosis epidemic a year later, the Bellevue Chest Service was founded.[citation needed
]

Bellevue opened the nation's first ambulatory cardiac clinic in 1911, followed by the Western Hemisphere's first ward for metabolic disorders in 1917.

Fritz Joubert Duquesne escaped the hospital prison ward in 1919 after having feigned paralysis for nearly two years.[11]

PS 106, the first public school for the emotionally disturbed children located in a public hospital, opened at Bellevue in 1935. In 1939,

New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation as one of 11 acute care hospitals in 1970.[citation needed
]

In 1981, Bellevue was certified as an official heart station for cardiac emergencies; a year later it was designated as a micro-surgical reimplantation center for the City of New York, by 1983 as a level one trauma center, and by 1988 as a head and spinal cord injury center. In 1990, it established an accredited residency training program in Emergency Medicine. The building that formerly served as the hospital's psychiatric facility started to be used as a homeless intake center and a men's homeless shelter in 1998. The publication of the Bellevue Literary Review, the first literary magazine to arise from a medical center, commenced in 2001; Bellevue Literary Press was founded six years later as a sister organization of the Bellevue Literary Review.[citation needed]

In April 2010, plans to redevelop the former psychiatric hospital building as a hotel and conference center connected to

NYU Langone Medical Center fell through.[12] The aftermath of Hurricane Sandy in October 2012 required evacuation of all patients due to power failure and flooding in the basement generators.[13][14] Bellevue was renamed NYC Health + Hospitals/Bellevue in November 2015 as a reflection of its parent organization's rebranding.[15]

In 2014 Bellevue was ranked 40th overall best hospital in the New York metro area and 29th in New York City by U.S. News & World Report.[16][4]

Medical firsts

Multiple firsts were performed at Bellevue in its early years. In 1799, it opened the first

maternity ward in the United States. By 1808, the world's first ligation of the femoral artery for an aneurysm was performed there, followed by the first ligation of the innominate artery ten years later.[citation needed
]

Bellevue physicians promoted the "Bone Bill" in 1854, which legalized dissection of cadavers for anatomical studies; two years later they started to also popularize the use of the hypodermic syringe. In 1862, the

cardiologist.[citation needed
]

By 1867, Bellevue physicians were instrumental in developing New York City's sanitary code, the first in the world. 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") was established at Bellevue that year. In 1868, Bellevue physician Stephen Smith became first commissioner of public health in New York City; he initiated a national campaign for health vaccinations. A year later, Bellevue established the second hospital-based, emergency ambulance service in the United States.[17]

In 1889, Bellevue physicians were the first to report that

HAART, a breakthrough in the treatment of AIDS, in 1996.[18]

In October 2014, Bellevue took in an

Ebola virus epidemic in West Africa.[19][20]

Other innovations

Binet scale which, in Wechsler's day, was generally considered the supreme authority with regard to intelligence testing. As the 1960 form of Lewis Terman's Stanford–Binet Intelligence Scales was less carefully developed than previous versions, Form I of the WAIS surpassed the Stanford–Binet tests in popularity by the 1960s.[21]

Facilities

Preserved hospital front gate.
Front gate of the hospital
Hospital "Cube" building.
The "Cube", built in 1971–74 along FDR Drive at the East River

One of the largest hospitals in the United States by number of beds,

inpatients each year.[3] More than 80 percent of Bellevue's patients come from the city's medically underserved populations. Bellevue is a safety net hospital, in that it will provide healthcare for individuals regardless of their insurance status or ability to pay.[1]

The hospital occupies a 25-story patient care facility with an

ICU, digital radiology communication and an outpatient facility. The hospital has an attending physician staff of 1,200 and an in-house staff of about 5,500.[1]

Bellevue features separate pediatric (0-25) and adult (25+) emergency departments.[23]

In popular culture

Bellevue has entered popular consciousness through its status as a major hospital in the largest city in the United States. The hospital notably treated the author Norman Mailer, who was taken to Bellevue after he stabbed his wife; and Mark David Chapman, who shuttled between Bellevue and the jail complex on Rikers Island after he shot and killed musician John Lennon. The poet Allen Ginsberg, also a former patient, mentioned the hospital by name in his famous poem "Howl" (1955).[24][4]

Bellevue has been the subject of books, including Bellevue: Three Centuries of Medicine and Mayhem at America's Most Storied Hospital (2016), by historian David Oshinsky,[24] Twelve Patients: Life and Death at Bellevue Hospital (2012), by Eric Manheimer, a former Bellevue medical director,[25] and Singular Intimacies: Becoming a Doctor at Bellevue (2002), by Danielle Ofri, a long-time physician at Bellevue.[26]

The 2018 NBC television series New Amsterdam takes place at a fictionalized version of Bellevue, renamed "New Amsterdam" in the show. Based on Manheimer's book, the series has filmed scenes at Bellevue and other New York City public hospitals.[25]

See also

References

  1. ^
    City of New York
    . Retrieved April 15, 2017.
  2. ^
    City of New York
    . Retrieved April 15, 2017.
  3. ^ a b c "Bellevue Hospital Facts". Retrieved May 31, 2020.
  4. ^ a b c d Harris, Mark (November 14, 2008). "Is It Checkout Time at Bellevue Hospital?". New York. Retrieved March 17, 2020.
  5. ISBN 978-0-19-974120-5
    .
  6. ^ McIntire, Tracey (February 13, 2023). "Bellevue--From Poorhouse to Hospital". National Museum of Civil War Medicine. Retrieved July 19, 2023.
  7. ISBN 978-0-8135-2347-7
    .
  8. ^ Carlisle, Robert J. (1893). An Account of Bellevue Hospital: With a Catalogue of the Medical and Surgical Staff from 1736 to 1894. Society of the Alumni of Bellevue Hospital. pp. 1–17.
  9. ^ Annual Report, Volume 1, by New York (State). Dept. of Social Welfare, 1908, page 268
  10. ^ Opdycke, Sandra. No One Was Turned Away: The Role of Public Hospitals in New York City since 1900, p. 67 (Oxford University Press, 1999), Focused on the history of Bellevue Hospital online
  11. ^ "'Paralytic' Flees from Prison Ward; Captain Fritz Duquesne, Who Feigned Helplessness, Escapes from Bellevue". The New York Times. May 28, 1919. p. 16. Retrieved July 16, 2010.
  12. ^ Rubinstein, Dana (April 15, 2010). "Bellevue Redevelopment Officially Dead". The New York Observer. Archived from the original on April 26, 2010. Retrieved July 16, 2010.
  13. ^ Jennings, Ashley (October 31, 2012). "New York City's Bellevue Hospital Forced to Evacuate Patients After Sandy". ABC News. Retrieved October 31, 2012.
  14. ISSN 0362-4331
    . Retrieved May 28, 2020.
  15. ^ Gamble, Molly (November 10, 2015). "A new name for NYC Health and Hospitals Corp.: 5 things to know". Becker's Hospital Review. Becker's Healthcare. Retrieved December 15, 2015.
  16. ^ "Best Hospitals". U.S. News & World Report. Retrieved February 26, 2015.
  17. ISBN 978-0-7864-3811-2
    .
  18. ^ "Charting the History of American Medicine Through Bellevue". AAMC. Retrieved April 4, 2024.
  19. ^ Santora, Marc (October 23, 2014). "Doctor in New York City Is Sick With Ebola". The New York Times. Retrieved April 4, 2024.
  20. ^ Bever, Lindsey (October 24, 2024). "New York's first Ebola patient will put Bellevue to the test". The Washington Post. Retrieved April 4, 2024.
  21. ISBN 978-0-471-73553-3
    .
  22. ^ "50 Largest Hospitals in America". Becker's Hospital Review. December 19, 2011. Retrieved March 17, 2020.
  23. ^ "Emergency/Trauma". Retrieved April 6, 2020.
  24. ^ a b Smith, Nathan (December 3, 2016). "Book Review: Bellevue by David Oshinsky". The Nation. Retrieved March 19, 2020.
  25. ^ a b Klein, Melissa (October 28, 2018). "New Amsterdam filming pumps money into city's hospitals". New York Post. Retrieved March 19, 2020.
  26. ^ "Review: Singular Intimacies: Becoming a Doctor at Bellevue". Publishers Weekly. February 24, 2003. Retrieved January 25, 2021.

Further reading

External links

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