Vassar Brothers Medical Center

Description

About VBMC
Vassar Brothers Medical Center is a 365 bed facility that has been serving New Yorks MidHudson Valley since 1887 Located on the banks of the Hudson River Vassar Brothers has established centers of excellence in cardiac services cancer care and women and childrens health services As a regional medical center Vassar houses the areas first and only cardiothoracic surgery center between Westchester and Albany and delivers more babies than any other hospital between Manhattan and Montreal Vassar has a stateoftheart birthing center with private luxury maternity suites each with a striking view of the Hudson River and a newly renovated and expanded outpatient cancer center The Dyson Center for Cancer Care is designed to accommodate patients and their families while providing infusion therapy radiation therapy stereotactic radiosurgery and a wide variety of support groups

Vassar Brothers has the only level 3 Neonatal Intensive Care Unit in the MidHudson Valley and the only dedicated Pediatric Unit The Medical Center houses the Center for Advanced Surgery one of the most sophisticated operating rooms in the world and one of only a handful in the United States The Vassar Brothers Wound Care Center intended for the treatment of chronic nonhealing wounds has one of the highest healing rates in the country To its south is the Vassar Brothers Medical Mall located at the intersection of Interstate 84 and Route 9 The facility houses the Fishkill Ambulatory Surgery Center the Vassar Brothers Imaging Center which offers CAT scans bone densitometry and mammography Radiation Oncology and the Vassar Brothers Center for Sleep Medicine

Vassar Brothers is an affiliate of the Health Quest hospital system which also includes Northern Dutchess Hospital in Rhinebeck and Putnam Hospital Center in Carmel

History

The History of Vassar Brothers Medical Center
Founders Buildings and the Passage of Time
The Vassar Family emigrated from England to America in 1796 and established a farm in the Poughkeepsie area overlooking the Hudson River James Vassar made the transition from farming to running family businesses in the early 1800s founding a brickyard on their property and soon thereafter starting a brewery operation He and his wife had two sons who grew up in the family businesses

Matthew the eldest brother was born in 1809 and became the business manager In the 1850s he left for a tour of Europe to visit family While in England he went to Guys Hospital founded by his relative Sir Thomas Guy This renowned and innovative institution was the initial inspiration for a hospital Although he carried back with him a vision for a hospital here his close friend and educator Milo P Jewett and his niece convinced him instead to found an allwomens college Setting aside his vision he chose instead to endow Vassar College

John Guy the younger brother was also involved in their local businesses He married and they had two sons Matthew and John Guy Unfortunately his wife died giving birth to their second son Overcome with grief he left his sons in the care of his brother while he traveled around the world Tragedy struck again when a fire significantly burned the brewery Two days later John Guy returned from traveling and entered the brewery to try to salvage what he could He was overcome by fumes suffocated and died leaving his two sons to be raised by their Uncle Matthew

By tradition John Guy had named his firstborn son after his brother and his second son after himself Uncle Matthew adopted the two boys and Matthew became Matthew Jr He proved to be an astute businessman and learned well from his uncle Vassar Ale housed in a relocated and refurbished brewery became very profitable under his management Because of respiratory illness John Guy following in his fathers footsteps traveled around the world leaving the management of the brick and ale businesses to his brother He often wrote letters with detailed instructions for investing his share of the businesses and ended up the wealthier of the two

Matthew Jr was both a businessman and a philanthropist solely dedicated to the City of Poughkeepsie In addition to serving as a trustee and treasurer of Vassar College he was a significant supporter of many institutions including the Vassar Home for Aged Men Remembering his uncles vision he left money in his will for the establishment of something even grander a hospital

Written in his own handwriting the will instructs his executors to quotAs soon as possible after my decease cause a hospital to be incorporated to be called Vassar Hospital and to be located in the City of Poughkeepsie and to be used as a hospital for the sick maimed and injured personsquot Total cost of the project was not to exceed 75000 He added a clause that if his brother wanted to join in the endowment the institutions name should be changed to quotVassar Brothers Hospitalquot Upon his brothers death in 1881 John Guy gave considerable endowment money for the hospital and in 1882 the institution was incorporated under the name we still use in part today Vassar Brothers Hospital

Matthew Jrs widow Irene Beech Vassar was inspired by the influence of Florence Nightingale a wellknown reformist nurse in Great Britain Mrs Vassar set out to find a location for the hospital and chose this piece of property on what was then the outskirts of the city The 14acre property had a perfect view of the river pleasant grounds and therapeutic breezes perfect for patients and their recovery The cornerstone was laid on September 4 1884 with construction continuing for three years The main building component was of course Vassar bricks

Vassar Brothers Hospital opened its doors on April 11 1887 with four wards of 10 beds a labor and delivery ward a nursery a childrens ward three private rooms and two isolation rooms In the first year of operation 80 patients were admitted The first building added was a barn to house the horses ridden by the doctors

Vassar Brothers trustees appointed Dr Guy Carleton Bayley a surgeon and friend of the Vassar family as the first superintendent His salary was stated at 2000 per year The 14 consulting physicians included one woman Elizabeth H Gerow MD

The milliondollar endowment left by the Vassars meant that no patient had to pay initially for hospitalization but those who could paid the full rate of 300 per day The first ambulance was purchased in 1887 for 580 and included quotbrakes and lamps but no gongquot By 1913 over 1200 patients had received treatment

Within a decade other buildings were erected onsite quotHome Iquot was originally built as a library and laboratory but was then converted into a residence and meeting hall for student nurses quotHome IIquot was built for the superintendent and then converted into housing for married interns and hospital personnel Laundry boiler smokestack and groundskeeping buildings were added around the turn of the 19th Century

A huge addition was added upon completion of a major oneyear fundraising campaign and opened for patients in 1924 with modern operating rooms more uptodate patient care rooms and an xray department Beautiful in its architecture the Mary Tower building was erected in 1934 as an oncampus home for nursing school instructors house physicians the director of nursing and nursing students Both Home I and Home II succumbed to age and were torn down As time went on into the 20th Century various sections of the old hospital were also torn down to make way for the new No part of the original hospital stands today the oldest section which can be seen to the right when walking through the main lobby is part of the 1920s addition

Community Circle was built in 1959 with a very innovative design for patient care circular patient care units with a centralized nursing station It was so successful that nine years later in 1968 South Circle was built using the same architectural concept and not incidentally built debtfree The Radiation Therapy Center opened in 1974 the first center of its kind to offer a full range of cancer treatments in a fivecounty area With the closure of maternity services at St Francis Vassar in 1975 expanded delivery room services and added a special care nursery for highrisk infants In 1977 Vassar began using the regions first head and fullbody CAT scanner

New emergency and critical care areas were added in 1983 along with some muchneeded renovations throughout the hospital The West Wing completed in 1999 houses a stateoftheart operating room suite and a beautiful labor and delivery unit with private rooms overlooking the Hudson River The Dyson Center for Cancer care opened its doors in December of 2001 offering a complete line of services to cancer patients In June of 2002 the institution made the historic decision to change the name from Vassar Brothers Hospital to Vassar Brothers Medical Center a melding of the tradition of the founding brothers with the expanded regional outreach of todays healthcare services

School of Nursing
Vassars nursing school graduated its first nurses in October of 1890 offering girls from poor families an opportunity room board uniform dresses and career training were all provided to them Student nurses were enrolled in a threeyear program and were housed on campus They received both classroom instruction and onthejob training In the first years of the program nurses prepared and served all of the meals cut fresh flowers for patients and gave round the clock care in 12hour shifts

In 1949 the Joseph Tower building opened for the nursing school This building was made possible by a generous donation from Joseph and Mary Tower who had previously donated to the construction of the Mary Tower building located on the opposite side of campus The nursing school remained on campus until the program was handed over to the local community college in 1972

A display of nursing memorabilia is located in the lobby of the Joseph Tower building and displays of a graduate nursing uniform and a student nursing uniform are located on either side of the glass doors in the Community Circle elevator lobby Historical photographs are part of a special exhibit on display in our Heritage Hall on the first floor of the Medical Center