The Brooklyn Hospital Center

Description

The Brooklyn Hospital Center is proud to offer you the finest specialty care and the latest in cuttingedge technology in a modern and welcoming setting that has transformed the boroughs first hospital into Brooklyns newest Our staff is dedicated to meeting your health care needs and committed to making your stay as pleasant and comfortable as possible Nearly 300000 people a year come to The Brooklyn Hospital Center for medical care Our commitment to ensure patients the quality medical care they expect and deserve is The Brooklyn Hospital Centers timehonored tradition since our founding in 1845

We are dedicated to providing the highest quality primary care as well as advanced medical and surgical services

Mission Vision amp Values

Our Mission
The Brooklyn Hospital Center is dedicated to providing outstanding health services education and research to keep the people of Brooklyn and greater New York healthy

Our Vision
We will be a destination provider of topquality and compassionate health care to the people of Brooklyn and greater New York

Our Values
Our core values CREATE our work culture

Community Service We are dedicated to improving the health and wellbeing of the people of Brooklyn and greater New York

Respect We honor the dignity and diversity of our patients staff and community

Efficiency We judiciously manage the human and financial resources entrusted to us

Accountability We are all individually responsible for the success of The Brooklyn Hospital Center

Teamwork As individuals and departments we work together to help The Brooklyn Hospital Center realize its greatest potential

Excellence We perform work of the highest quality to deliver outstanding care

History

HISTORY OF THE BROOKLYN HOSPITAL CENTER
1839
The year was 1839 when a gentleman from Buffalo broke a leg on Fulton Street near Brooklyn City Hall and it soon became clear that there was no place to take the stranger to except the infamous almshouse four miles away Mayor Cyrus P Smith who witnessed the accident had the man taken to a private house nearby and cared for at his own expense

1845
Six years later Mayor Smith convened a public meeting to discuss the establishment of a hospital in Brooklyn The meeting was held in February 1845 and in May of that year Brooklyn City Hospital later renamed The Brooklyn Hospital was incorporated by the state legislature Smith later would become the president of the first board of trustees

Raising funds for the hospital at first was not encouraging Newspaper accounts of the time described how hardly anyone attended those early fund raising meetings One account tells of a meeting at the Brooklyn Institute where only 95 was collected

1846
Nonetheless the need for a hospital in the growing city was so acute that in 1846 the board of trustees moved to secure a temporary facility Aided by generous contributions from Augustus Graham and other trustees a twostory frame house was purchased for 2600 from Thomas Litus on what is now Hudson Avenue

1847
On December 10 1847 the Brooklyn City Dispensary admitted its first patient Inadequate as it was this frame house would serve as a hospital for the sick and the poor until 1852 when the first building on the present site opened

1848
Already by 1848 there was enough money collected through private contributions to begin in earnest the search for land for a hospital In December of that year the Committee of Lands reported with much fanfare and happiness the purchase from Kings County of a plot of 74 lots at 200 per lot This land was located in an area bounded by Raymond Street DeKalb Avenue and Canton Street During Revolutionary times the land was known as Cowenhavens Woods and because of its strategic location on a hill served as a fort for the forces of General Putnam Later in the War of 1812 it was again fortified and renamed Fort Greene

The first medical staff consisted of Doctors T L Mason J S Thorne and D Ayres who were the attending surgeons Doctors HI Cullen Purcell Cook C R McClellan and C L Mitchell assumed the care of medical cases

Still in its infancy the hospital acquired from various sources a medical library one of the first public medical libraries in New York A medical student had access to the library for the nominal fee of 250 a year with the understanding that quotprofane swearing would be sufficient to deprive him of its privilegesquot

During the first year of operation 18481849 90 patients were treated in the hospital Sixty of those patients received medical attention and the rest required surgery The early difficulties faced in the small frame house that served as the only hospital of Brooklyn were described by Dr Ayres in his first report quotDuring the year several capital operations have been performed and at times the surgeons have found themselves much embarrassed to provide the necessary accommodations for all their patients thus when all the rooms are occupied it has become necessary to perform bloody operations in a ward before several sick patientsquot

1851
On June 11 1851 more than six years after Mayor Smith had convened the public hearing for the purpose of establishing a hospital the first cornerstone was laid by Mrs Augustus Graham whose husband by then deceased had contributed the total of 38000 The first building opened a year later and was hailed immediately as quotthe last wordquot in hospital construction It initially housed 160 patients

1858
In 1858 Pathological Hall was built and quickly recognized by the medical profession as a place where theorizing and conjecture were superseded by the study of facts The building entirely separated from the main hospital building was designed as a place for the study of pathological anatomy The first floor was devoted to the study of pathology and on the second floor there were a lecture room a museum and a library In this building autopsies were conducted coroners inquests held and lectures delivered The Brooklyn Hospital was the second hospital in the country to have a separate building to be used exclusively for the study of pathology

When the Civil War broke out The Brooklyn Hospital took on the role of caring for the sick and wounded soldiers of the Union Army a role it would assume again during the SpanishAmerican War World War I and World War II In World War I a floor of the West Pavilion with its 60 beds was set aside for the care of sick and disabled sailors

quotI remember that during World War I the hospital was very activequot recalled Dr Edwin P Maynard Jr whose association with the hospital dates back to 1921 and whose father was treasurer and chairman of the executive committee at The Brooklyn Hospital quotI remember the Navy paid us 7 a week for each wounded man and there were many of themquot

Over one hundred years after they were written in fine Spencerian script bound volumes of Case Records the earliest dated 18671869 were found in the Hospitals library Research disclosed that they were among the first in the country to be maintained by means of a system that utilized a standardized nomenclature of disease to describe the afflictions of patients and crossreferenced to make them easy to locate This presumably was for the purpose of being able to extract information and statistics for study and research to be conducted at a later date

1869
After the Civil War in 1869 the Orthopedic Infirmary was opened in the building that had originally housed Pathological Hall Poor patients from all over Long Island were treated there Many patients were referred to the hospitals wards but minor operations were performed in the Infirmary

1880
A training school for nurses was established in 1880 thanks to the civicminded women of the Fruit and Flower Mission It was the first nursing school in Brooklyn and the second one in the State The schools management was in the hands of these ladies with Mrs Seth Low as their first president The hospital paid the school for the services of its students In 1882 the first class of four students graduated The school was to last until 1968 when Long Island University took over the responsibility of training nurses and the hospital provided the clinical experience for the trainees

1883
In 1883 to change the impression that Brooklyn City Hospital was a municipal hospital the legal name became simply The Brooklyn Hospital A report of the time said quotThis was deemed advisable because while the hospital was a charitable institution the name conveyed the erroneous idea that it was a municipal corporation and supported by the city properquot 1890 An ambulance service was established in 1890 to cover a district that included downtown Brooklyn Fort Greene the Navy Yard and BedfordStuyvesant During its first year of service the ambulance responded to 971 calls

1893
By 1893 another building was erected to house one of the first separate maternity departments to be found in a general hospital

1896
In 1896 an annex was constructed to the nurses residence and in 1912 a separate building was completed on Ashland Place and opened as an enlarged dispensary The latter building became the first constructed during an ambitious expansion program carried out during the presidency of Harold I Pratt Additional work in the course of his term included a new hospital plant centering around the maternity building and demolition of the original 1852 structure The institution by then had 306 beds

1923
In 1923 St Christophers Hospital for Babies was transferred to the hospital where it occupied the West Pavilion That same year a dental clinic the City Dental Clinic and Dispensary also moved to The Brooklyn Hospital

1925
A great step forward in the direction of more efficient management of patient care took place in 1925 when Doctors William H Field and Edwin P Maynard Jr introduced a unit history system for keeping permanent easytoretrieve patients records At the time both young men were residents at the Hospital Dr Maynard explained the system during an interview quotAt the time I arrived at the hospital each department kept records separately Field and I made an effort to adopt a unit system for each patient each patient would get a number and that way we were able to file their records properly it made a tremendous difference It simplified everything and made patient care that much betterquot

1926
In 1926 an Electrocardiograph was installed the second in Brooklyn and a Department of Electrocardiography was established

1945
Extensive modernization of equipment and facilities took place in the years following World War II Improvements and additions included a new cardiopulmonary laboratory for the study of diseases of the blood and circulatory system A specially designed postanesthesia room was built In it patients would spend the important hours immediately following surgery under the constant supervision of a trained team of nurses and doctors who checked their reactions until they awoke and could be returned to their rooms A centrallypiped oxygen system was also installed

1957
In 1957 The Brooklyn Hospital was further strengthened as a result of a merger with the Brooklyn Thoracic Hospital Trustees and staff members of the combined institutions brought their abilities to bear for the good of the community Their farsightedness led to the development of a master plan which from the period between 1969 and 1980 led to the renovation and reconstruction of more than half the hospital During the same period new services and equipment were added keeping in time with the rapidly accelerating progress being made in methods of patient care

1968
Another merger took place in 1968 and a prominentlyplaced plaque commemorates quotThe Evangelical Deaconess Hospital inspired in its inception by the Reverend August Daniel Pfost it served the Bushwick community for almost fifty yearsquot

1976
In 1976 a 20story Staff Residence was completed and named in honor of Dr Edwin P Maynard Jr a man whose name has appeared several times in the course of this narrative In his lifetime Dr Maynard was associated with The Brooklyn Hospital for over sixty years A cardiologist of note he also served as keeper of the Hospitals Archives a task he performed as a labor of love Other programs and services that became available included a new pharmacy and a clinical association with the Arnold and Marie Schwartz College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences at Long Island University a new clinical laboratory a hemodialysis service a Neonatal Intensive Care Unit a whole body CAT scanner a Speech and Hearing Center a Diabetes and Endocrine Center residency programs in Neurology Rehabilitation Medicine and Ophthalmology a vascular surgery service and a training program for Physicians Assistants supported by the US Department of Health Education and Welfare Nuclear Medicine Cardiology and Oral Surgery also grew rapidly as advances occurred in their respective fields

1980
In September of 1980 The Brooklyn Hospital celebrated the anniversary of its founding in 1845 and at that time its President Mrs George M Billings announced that the Hospital had been given final approval of its application to the US Department of Health and Human Services for a 72 million mortgage loan guarantee This means that Brooklyns first voluntary hospital will be around for a great many years to come building upon the tradition it established in its earliest days to provide modern efficient medical and hospital care for the people of the community The Brooklyn Hospital continues to recognize that those people and the honest desire to meet their needs are its greatest source of strength

1982
One of the most dynamic periods in the history of the Brooklyn Hospital and Caledonian Hospital Merger disaffiliation from Cumberland Hospital The merger and disaffiliation created The Brooklyn HospitalCaledonian Hospital The intent of the merger with Caledonian Hospital was to create a Board and Management structure and a staff capable of providing a broader range of highquality cost effective health services to the Corporations collective communities

1986
The project to rebuild Caledonian Hospital became fully operational after the successful MCFFA Bond sale in late 1985 and subsequent mortgage closing in January 1986

1987
On December 28 the first patients were moved into a beautiful new modern Caledonian Hospital wing One half of the physical plant at that site was now new and the Emergency Room was five times its former size

1990
The official name of the Hospital is changed to The Brooklyn Hospital Center

1991
New York State implements a new requirement on annual community benefit standards leading to the development of the first formal Community Service Report for The Brooklyn Hospital Center

1992
Mrs George M Billings retires as Chairman of the Board after serving in that position for 22 years

1993
An Academic and Clinical Affiliation Agreement with New York University Medical Center and New York University is signed commencing on January 1 1994

1995
The development of The Brooklyn Hospital Network developed with an estimated capital requirement of approximately 50 million The Network included five new ownedoperated Article 28 extension centers new affiliations with existing community based providers and health services development with communitybased organizations affiliated physician practices and Schoolbased health centers as well as the opening of the Rockwell Dialysis Unit in January 1996 Many of these remain in existence today providing necessary healthcare services to varied communities served by the Hospital

1998
On February 12 the Board of Trustees voted unanimously that The Brooklyn Hospital Center should become a Corporate Member of The New York and Presbyterian Healthcare System On February 18 all documents were executed This effectively terminated the affiliation with New York University Medical Center and New York Universi

1997
Modernization 2000 is launched a 57000000 FHA Program Phase I concluded in 1999

2001
The defining moment was of course the September 11 attack on the World Trade Center As we now reflect from not so great a distance we are exceedingly proud of The Brooklyn Hospital Center and its people for their selfless response and of their abiding commitment to a Mission that was more than a century and a half old At that time of national tragedy when our own local community needed us more than ever The Brooklyn Hospital Center was there The Hospital Center on a much brighter note celebrated the completion of Modernization 2000 a construction renovation and technology development program that placed the The Brooklyn Hospital Center among the most modern and best equipped hospitals in New York

TODAY The Brooklyn Hospital Center has undergone significant change over the past few years and is committed to remaining economically viable with a promising future addressing the healthcare need of the communities of Brooklyn We continue to modernize our hospital with investments in facility renovation and technology including the installation of ECLYPSIS electronic medical record system Many new services are being initiated new physicians are being recruited and relationships with surrounding nursing homes are being developed to strengthen our growing geriatrics service Cardiology nephrology and HIV services continue to be major strengths as well as does womens health and bariatric surgery We continue to serve the community with the highestquality healthcare making The Brooklyn Hospital Center a leading clinical facility and the boroughs first choice for medical care