Bellevue Hospital (officiallyNYC Health + Hospitals/Bellevue and formerly known asBellevue Hospital Center) is a hospital inNew York City and the oldestpublic hospital in the United States.^[2][4] One of the largest hospitals in the United States by number of beds, it is located at 462First Avenue in theKips Bay neighborhood ofManhattan, New York City. Bellevue is also home toFDNY EMS Station 08, formerly NYC EMS Station 13.

Bellevue Hospital
NYC Health + Hospitals
Geography
Location	462First Avenue,Manhattan, New York, New York, United States
Coordinates	40°44′21″N73°58′31″W / 40.7393°N 73.9753°W /40.7393; -73.9753
Organization
Funding	Public hospital
Type	Teaching
Affiliated university	New York University School of Medicine[1]
Network	NYC Health + Hospitals NYU Langone Health System[2]
Services
Emergency department	Level I Adult Trauma Center / Level II Pediatric Trauma Center
Beds	912[3]
Helipad	East 34th Street Heliport (IATA:TSS)
History
Opened	March 31, 1736 (289 years ago) (1736-03-31)[2]
Links
Website	www.nychealthandhospitals.org/bellevue
Lists	Hospitals in New York State
Other links	Hospitals in Manhattan

Historically, Bellevue was so frequently associated with its treatment of mentally ill patients that "Bellevue" became a local pejorativeslang term for apsychiatric hospital. The hospital has since developed into a comprehensive major medical center includingoutpatient, specialty, and skilled nursing care, as well as emergency andinpatient services. The hospital contains a 25-story patient care facility and has anattending physician staff of 1,200 and anin-house staff of about 5,500.

Bellevue is asafety 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.^[5]

Bellevue traces its origins to the city's first permanentalmshouse, a two-story brick building completed in 1736 on thecity common, nowCity Hall Park.^[6][7]

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 ofyellow fever outbreaks. The hospital was formally namedBellevue Hospital in 1824.^[8][9]

By 1787,Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons had assigned faculty and medical students to Bellevue. Columbia faculty and students would remain at Bellevue for the next 181 years, until the restructuring of the academic affiliations of Bellevue Hospital in 1968.New York University faculty began to conduct clinical instruction at the hospital in 1819. In 1849, an amphitheater for clinical teaching and surgery opened. In 1861, the Bellevue Hospital Medical College, the firstmedical college in New York with connections to a hospital, was founded. By 1873, the nation's firstnursing school based onFlorence Nightingale's principles opened at Bellevue, followed by the nation's first children's clinic in 1874 and the nation's first emergency pavilion in 1876; a pavilion for the insane, an approach considered revolutionary at the time, was erected within hospital grounds in 1879. For that reason, the nameBellevue is sometimes used as ametonym for psychiatric hospitals.Mark Harris inNew York called it "theChelsea Hotel of the mad".^[4]

Bellevue initiated aresidency training program in 1883 that is still the model for surgical training worldwide. The Carnegie Laboratory, the nation's firstpathology andbacteriology laboratory, was founded there a year later, followed by the nation's first men's nursing school in 1888. By 1892, Bellevue established a dedicated unit foralcoholics.^{[citation needed]}

In 1902, the administrative Bellevue and Allied Hospitals organization were formed by the city, under president John W. Brannan. B&AH also includedGouverneur Hospital,Harlem Hospital, andFordham Hospital.^[10] B&AH opened doors to female and black physicians.^[11] In the midst of atuberculosisepidemic 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.New York City's Office of the Chief Medical Examiner began on the second floor in 1918. German spy and saboteurFritz Joubert Duquesne escaped the hospital prison ward in 1919 after having feigned paralysis for nearly two years.^[12]

PS 106, the first public school for the emotionally disturbed children located in a public hospital, opened at Bellevue in 1935. In 1939,David Margolis began work on nineWork Projects Administration murals in entrance rotunda titledMaterials of Relaxation, which were completed in 1941. Bellevue became the site of the world's first hospital catastrophe unit the same year; the world's firstcardiopulmonary laboratory was established at Bellevue byAndre Cournand andDickinson Richards a year later, and the nation's first heart failure clinic opened, staffed byEugene Braunwald, in 1952. In 1960. New York City's Office of the Chief Medical Examiner moved out of the second floor and into its new building at 520 First Avenue, but still maintained close relations with Bellevue. In 1962, Bellevue established the firstintensive care unit in amunicipal hospital, and in 1964, Bellevue was designated as the stand-by hospital for treatment of visiting presidents, foreign dignitaries, injured members of the city's uniformed services, and United Nations diplomats. Bellevue joined theNew 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 alevel 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 theBellevue 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 toNYU Langone Medical Center fell through.^[13] The aftermath ofHurricane Sandy in October 2012 required evacuation of all patients due to power failure and flooding in the basement generators.^[14][15] Bellevue was renamed NYC Health + Hospitals/Bellevue in November 2015 as a reflection ofits parent organization's rebranding.^[16]

In 2014 Bellevue was ranked 40th overall best hospital in the New York metro area and 29th in New York City byU.S. News & World Report.^[17][4]

Multiple firsts were performed at Bellevue in its early years. In 1799, it opened the firstmaternity ward in the United States. By 1808, the world's firstligation of thefemoral artery for ananeurysm was performed there, followed by the first ligation of theinnominate 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, theAustin Flint murmur was named forAustin Flint, prominent Bellevue Hospitalcardiologist.^{[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 firstoutpatient 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 healthvaccinations. A year later, Bellevue established the second hospital-based, emergency ambulance service in the United States.^[18]

In 1889, Bellevue physicians were the first to report thattuberculosis is a preventable disease; five years later was the successful operation of the abdomen for a pistol shot wound. William Tillett discoveredstreptokinase, later used for the acute treatment ofmyocardial infarction, at Bellevue in 1933.Nina Starr Braunwald performed the first mitral valve replacement in 1960 at the hospital. In 1967, Bellevue physicians performed the first cadaver kidney transplant. In 1971, the first active immunization forhepatitis B was developed by Bellevue physicians. Bellevue played a key role in the development of the "Triple Drug Cocktail" orHAART, a breakthrough in the treatment of AIDS, in 1996.^[19]

In October 2014, Bellevue took in anEbola patient,Craig Spencer, an individual who worked withMédecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders) in Guinea a month prior during the 2014Ebola virus epidemic in West Africa.^[20][21]

David Wechsler, Ph.D. who worked at Bellevue from 1932 to 1967, including as Chief Psychologist, developed the well-knownintelligence tests, such as theWechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS) and theWechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC), to get to know his patients at the hospital. This battery differed greatly from theBinet scale which, in Wechsler's day, was generally considered the supreme authority with regard to intelligence testing. As the 1960 form ofLewis Terman'sStanford–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.^[22]

One of the largest hospitals in the United States by number of beds,^[23] it handles nearly 460,000 non-ERoutpatient clinic visits, nearly 106,000 emergency visits and some 30,000inpatients each year.^[5] More than 80 percent of Bellevue's patients come from the city's medically underserved populations. Bellevue is asafety 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 anICU, digital radiology communication and an outpatient facility. The hospital has anattending physician staff of 1,200 and anin-house staff of about 5,500.^[1]

Bellevue features separate pediatric (0-25) and adult (25+) emergency departments.^[24]

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 authorNorman Mailer, who was taken to Bellevue after he stabbed his wife; andMark David Chapman, who shuttled between Bellevue and the jail complex onRikers Island after he shot and killed musicianJohn Lennon. The poetAllen Ginsberg, also a former patient, mentioned the hospital by name in his famous poem "Howl" (1955).^[25][4] In the 1945 filmThe Lost Weekend,Ray Milland is seen escaping from Bellevue's chaotic alcoholic ward.

Bellevue has been the subject of books, includingBellevue: Three Centuries of Medicine and Mayhem at America's Most Storied Hospital (2016), by historianDavid Oshinsky,^[25]Twelve Patients: Life and Death at Bellevue Hospital (2012), by Eric Manheimer, a former Bellevue medical director,^[26] andSingular Intimacies: Becoming a Doctor at Bellevue (2002), byDanielle Ofri, a long-time physician at Bellevue.^[27]

The 2018 NBC television seriesNew 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.^[26]

• List of the oldest hospitals in the United States

• Holland, Julie (2009).Weekends at Bellevue: Nine Years on the Night Shift at the Psych ER. New York: Bantam Books.ISBN 978-0-553-80766-0.
• Nolen, William A. (1990).The Making of a Surgeon. Denver: Mid-List Press.ISBN 0-922811-46-6.
• Ofri, Danielle (2009).Singular Intimacies: Becoming a Doctor at Bellevue. Boston: Beacon Press.ISBN 978-0-8070-7252-3.
• Oshinsky, David (2016).Bellevue: Three Centuries of Medicine and Mayhem at America's Most Storied Hospital. New York: Anchor Books.ISBN 978-0-307-38671-7.

• Official website
• NYC Health + Hospitals/Bellevue at NYU Medical Center
• NYU School of Medicine / Library and Archives with Bellevue related collections
• NYC Health + Hospitals/Bellevue Psychiatry Inpatient Services
• Smith, Dinitia (October 2, 2002)."A Literary Review at Bellevue? Believe it".The New York Times. Arts.