St Barnabas Hospital

Description

St Barnabas Hospital
The flagship in our health care system St Barnabas Hospital is a 461bed notforprofit nonsectarian acute care community hospital and Level I Trauma Center authorized to treat the most critically ill and severely injured patients As a Statedesignated Stroke Center and Statedesignated AIDS Center we provide access to muchneeded services in our community

St Barnabas Hospital recently completed major renovation and construction projects adding a spacious hospital lobby fullservice ambulatory surgery center stateoftheart operating suite inpatient shortterm hospice unit and attractive gateways to the campus

Through our Cultural and Language Access Assistance program we strive to meet the needs of our diverse patient population We provide our patients with access to interpreting services in 130 languages as well as video monitor sign language interpreting

History

History
St Barnabas Hospital was incorporated as The Home for the Incurables on April 6 1866 less than a year after the close of the Civil War At the time it was the worlds second chronic disease hospital Americas first and the inspiration for many to follow

The Hospital was founded by the Reverend Washington Rodman rector of Grace Episcopal Church in the West Farms area of what is now the Bronx He called together a group of publicspirited citizens to explore how to provide a haven for socalled incurables who could not be cared for in existing hospitals Reverend Rodmans goal was to bring hope and medical care to a group that had neither

Dr PC Pease the Home for Incurables first physician noted that where the faintest hope exists no efforts are spared nor are any new remedies left untried It was here that nitrous oxide was first successfully used as an anesthetic in prolonged operations The Home received its first patients in 1867 in a small frame building that had been a temperance house Thirtythree patients were admitted the first year

For many years the annual meetings of the Society of the Homes for the Incurables were held on June 11 the feast of St Barnabas In the words of the Reverend T Galludet DD at the annual meeting in 1868 St Barnabas was the Son of Consolation and that simple expression suggests to us a blessing from the Lord We hope to be sons of consolation to many afflicted hearts For those reasons as well as many others the name St Barnabas Hospital seemed to have particular suitability since our objective is the consolation and alleviation of the afflictions of the chronically disabled in terms of modern practices and accepted procedures

Today St Barnabas is a 461bed nonsectarian community hospital and Level I Trauma Center providing the highest quality of care to a diverse and changing Bronx community