New York Methodist Hospital

New York Methodist Hospital (NYM) is located in Park Slope in Brooklyn, New York, between Seventh and Eighth Avenues, on Sixth Street. The hospital is a 651-bed^[1] (including bassinets) non-profit hospital and serves more than 40,000 inpatients each year. Another 250,000 outpatient visits and services are logged annually. The Hospital is also a major teaching hospital with ten graduate medical education programs. New York Methodist Hospital is affiliated with the Weill Cornell Medical College and the NewYork-Presbyterian Healthcare System which provides access to physicians and resources.

New York Methodist has a number of institutes that bring together multidisciplinary specialists to provide care and offer community education and physician referral services. These are the Institute for Advanced and Minimally Invasive Surgery, the Institute for Asthma and Other Lung Diseases, the Institute for Cancer Care, the Institute for Cardiology and Cardiac Surgery, the Institute for Digestive and Liver Disorders, the Institute for Healthy Aging, the Institute for Advanced Otolaryngology, the Institute for Neurosciences, the Institute for Orthopedic Medicine and Surgery, the Institute for Vascular Medicine and Surgery and the Institute for Women's Health.

History

Planning

By 1880, the population of Brooklyn was nearly 600,000. As businessmen and builders plotted the development of new residential districts to house this burgeoning population and planned new transit lines to move commuters between home and work, Brooklynites enjoyed themselves listening to concerts at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, taking a dip in the ocean at Coney Island or cheering on their own Brooklyn Atlantics at the Union Base Ball Grounds in Williamsburg.

It was also a busy year for the Reverend James Monroe Buckley, editor of the influential Methodist Episcopal periodical The Christian Advocate. Buckley, formerly the pastor of a congregation on Hanson Place, had set his heart on founding a new hospital. Buckley was well aware that as Brooklyn continued to grow, accidents, as well as the other health emergencies besetting an expanding population, required new and state-of-the-art hospital facilities. As a Methodist, he also felt that his denomination should play a role in implementing and sustaining the medical and social services that an increasingly urban America needed. In January 1881, he used the columns of The Christian Advocate to challenge his fellow Methodists to establish such a facility, asking them, “Is it not time that somewhere we built a hospital?”

Buckley’s challenge was promptly answered by George Ingraham Seney, a prominent banker, art connoisseur, Methodist layman and Brooklyn resident. Seney pledged $100,000 and several land lots to begin construction of the hospital pavilions, and to incorporate the institution and appoint a board of trustees. On May 27, 1881, the Methodist Episcopal Hospital was born when Buckley and his associates obtained a charter from the State of New York. On September 20 of the following year, they laid the cornerstone for the Hospital’s main building.

Opening

On December 19, 1887, the Methodist Episcopal Hospital admitted its first patient. During its first year of operation, the Hospital’s medical faculty numbered sixteen: two attending surgeons, two attending physicians, four assistants, two consulting physicians, two consulting surgeons, one pathologist and a house staff of three additional doctors. The Hospital also attracted a small support staff of “internes,” new doctors in need of postgraduate training, who among their other duties were responsible for examining and recommending admission of new patients. In 1888, the Hospital opened its Training School for Nurses, which immediately proved to be a highly effective educational program as well as a source of nursing support for the doctors. The Children’s Ward, which opened in 1889, inaugurated Methodist’s commitment to pediatric care for Brooklyn’s youngest residents.

In its earliest years, the Hospital divided its services between the “medical” and the “surgical,” with the latter encompassing the vast majority of its patient caseload. While some of this surgery was elective, much of it consisted of emergency cases rushed to the Hospital by its ambulance. As the Hospital’s first annual report observed in 1888, “the great strain which our intense modern life puts upon both body and mind” jeopardized the well-being of Brooklynites in the forms of industrial machinery, urban overcrowding and traffic, and “the multiplication of vices always associated with crowded populations,” including alcoholism and addiction.

As a community hospital, Methodist treated patients for a seemingly endless variety of ailments and afflictions, ranging from epilepsy, “hysteria,” typhoid fever, and opium and gas poisoning, to providing corrective surgery for a veteran whose legs had been amputated during the Civil War. It also became the principal health center for the young single women, many of them immigrants, who worked as live-in domestic servants, cooks and nannies for the moneyed families occupying Park Slope’s new brownstone townhouses.

By 1907, the Hospital’s original seventy beds had grown to two hundred. And by 1912, the staff and trustees could look back proudly on twenty five years of service in which the Hospital had cared for a total of 42,879 inpatients, provided nearly $1 million in free care and over 100,000 outpatient dispensary visits.

The "Baby Hospital"

An early well-visit clinic

The “roaring twenties” would witness new construction at the Hospital, and by mid-decade, Methodist’s total bed capacity had risen to 375. To reach the Hospital during emergencies, Brooklyn residents could now rely on a General Motors ambulance that had replaced the much-used old horse-drawn vehicles. Perhaps most notable of the Hospital’s new additions was the Maternity Building, completed in 1924. Obstetrics had become one of the Hospital’s “growth” fields. In the Maternity Building’s first eight months, 863 babies were born, and the Hospital’s doctors made news in 1925 when they delivered three sets of twins within 24 hours. Even during the financially trying times of the Great Depression and the rations of wartime, the Maternity Building remained busy.

With the end of World War II and Korean War, veterans and their wives created their own “baby boom” at the Hospital. The Maternity Building had become one of the Hospital’s busiest. In 1952, the Division of Obstetrics and Gynecology reported that its staff had delivered 54,300 babies since the Pavilion had opened in 1924. Methodist was now known throughout Brooklyn as the “Baby Hospital.”

"Mother Hospital of Methodism"

Since its inception, the Hospital’s non-denominational orientation was a key feature of its identity. Over the years, board members and administrators continued to describe patients, regardless of their religious beliefs, as “guests of the Church.” The Hospital’s affiliation resulted in a name change. In 1969, as the three American branches of Methodism prepared to come together as the United Methodist Church, Methodist Episcopal Hospital officially became the Methodist Hospital of Brooklyn. The UMC and the Hospital have also replaced their corporate connection with a “traditional” relationship.

The institution continues to be proud of its identity as the “Mother Hospital of Methodism,” the very first of 78 United Methodist Church-affiliated hospitals in the United States. In 1970, the Hospital was designated a National Historic Landmark of the United Methodist Church. The plaque, displayed at the Hospital, reads, in part: “The First Methodist Hospital in the world established May 27, 1881 in the City of Brooklyn, NY, on this site.”

20th century expansion

By 1963, the Hospital was the workplace of 141 full-time physicians and surgeons, a consulting staff of 36 and a courtesy staff of thirty six, over 400 full-time nurses, 170 student nurses, fifty two interns and residents, 138 volunteers, and 885 other workers.

As New York City weathered a fiscal crisis and a widespread reputation for urban decay in the 1970s, Brooklyn was experiencing the first stirrings of a rebirth that would blossom fully in the decades to come. After 1965, revised federal immigration laws drew fresh generations of newcomers to New York City, many of whom settled in Brooklyn, where they reinvigorated old neighborhoods and community businesses. In Park Slope, young professionals recognized the charm and convenience of one of Brooklyn’s most distinguished neighborhoods and began moving in, changing the commercial and residential character of the district.

In harmony with the borough’s regained vitality, the Methodist Hospital undertook a modernization program that renewed and enhanced the entire institution. The old Nurses’ Residence building was transformed into a new East Pavilion to meet the need for more office space. The eight-story New Pavilion opened in 1983 with a state-of-the-art operating room suite, recovery rooms, an obstetrical suite, delivery rooms and nurseries, intensive care units, a blood bank and clinical laboratories. In 1997, the New Pavilion was renamed the John E. Carrington Pavilion to honor Dr. Carrington, a Methodist minister and trustee who joined the board in 1968 and has served as its chairman since 1979.

The 1990s proved to be a busy and momentous decade for the Hospital. A major commitment was made to new, minimally invasive surgery techniques. Additionally, the Hospital availed itself of new developments in diagnostic imaging technology such as ultrasound, computerized tomography (CT) scanning, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and nuclear medicine. New programs in place by the mid-1990s offered a wide array of innovative inpatient and outpatient services. Among them were a cardiac catheterization unit, a cardiopulmonary physiology laboratory, a chest pain emergency center, a chronic pain management center, a sleep disorders center, a reproductive endocrinology lab, a spine and arthritis center and a women’s diagnostic center.

As the 1990s progressed, it became clear that market forces were driving health care providers into a new era, even without health care reform legislation. The Hospital’s trustees secured the institution’s future when they entered into an alliance with The New York Hospital, now the NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital, in 1993. The New York Hospital Care Network, now the New York-Presbyterian Healthcare System, was formed to ensure that people in the metropolitan area would continue to have access to high quality medical care in spite of a rapidly evolving health care system and escalating costs. Membership in the System and affiliation with the Weill Cornell Medical College also enhanced graduate medical education at the Hospital, as residents in many of its ten training programs now benefited from shared NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell faculty members in several subspecialties. A new name accompanied membership in the System: in 1994 the medical complex centered on Sixth Street and Seventh Avenue officially became New York Methodist Hospital (NYM).

Just a few years later, NYM embarked on a major construction project, replacing an unsightly parking lot on Seventh Avenue with a modern medical pavilion, designed to blend with the neighborhood’s 19th century architecture. Completed in 1998, the NYM Medical Office Pavilion features street level retail establishments, four floors of NYM faculty and private physician offices, rehabilitation facilities and a multi-level underground parking garage.

21st century

In early 2000, it became apparent that the Hospital's much-publicized menopause reversal surgery by Dr. Kutluk Oktay was a failure, and a lawsuit was filed against the doctor and the hospital by patient Margaret Lloyd Hart. Despite this, Methodist continued to spread claims about Oktay's surgery, which the hospital knew to be false, through the hospital's website.^[2][3]

The first years of the 21st century brought further innovation at New York Methodist Hospital. The year 2000 saw the opening of new obstetrics facilities that included a mother-baby unit (post partum floor), an expanded Neonatal Intensive Care Unit and 12 labor-delivery-recovery rooms committed to a “family-centered birthing experience.”

In 2001, the former president of the NY Methodist Medical Board and one of the hospital's top surgeons, Mohammad Oloumi, had his medical license revoked by the NY State Department of Health, having been charged with 49 counts of professional misconduct. The former vice president of Methodist's medical board, Paul Magazeh, was barred from practicing medicine.^[4]

New York Methodist Hospital continued to develop and offer a range of medical services, including laparoscopic surgery, deep brain stimulation (to treat Parkinson’s Disease and other conditions) and IMRT, one of the most advanced forms of radiation therapy against cancer tumors.

Surgery in the New York Methodist-Cornell Heart Center.

One of the new century’s most noteworthy events for the Hospital was the opening in April 2004 of the New York Methodist-Cornell Heart Center that brought to Brooklyn a cardiac surgery center staffed with a surgical team from the Weill Cornell Medical Center. The new Center was developed after New York State selected NYM to create a comprehensive heart surgery program for the borough of Brooklyn. It is only the third such center in Brooklyn and was approved by the State following a highly competitive process. The Center opened with two cardiac surgery rooms, eight-bed cardiac intensive care unit, and patient and family waiting areas.

In 2007, NYM completed work on a new seven-story patient care pavilion that provides space for a greatly enlarged Emergency Department (including a separate pediatric emergency room), an updated pediatrics unit and four spacious and modern medical/surgical units. NYM also unveiled the Advanced Women’s Imaging and Prenatal Testing Center. This new facility provides a range of prenatal testing options for pregnant women, including laboratory tests and ultrasound tests. The center also offers services and diagnostic examinations focused on prevention and early detection of breast and gynecologic diseases, including breast mammography and ultrasound, gynecologic ultrasonography and bone densitometry. The Hospital’s physician offices at One Prospect Park West also made their debut in 2009. The construction of the new site allowed NYM to expand services in urology, pediatrics, podiatry and orthopedics, and wound care.

In 2011, a drug ring composed of NY Methodist residents was broken up by the DEA.^[5]

In September 2013, NYM agreed to implement a compliance program to settle civil claims under the Controlled Substances Act. This related to NYM medical residents' prescriptions for the drug Adderall without a legitimate medical purpose. NYM also paid a civil penalty of $70,000.^[6]

In November 2013, one of the largest judgements against a major NY hospital in recent memory was levied against NY Methodist Hospital, in the case of a young child who was not properly treated for a severe case of jaundice.^[7]

In the second decade of the 21st century, NY Methodist opened a coordinated program for the diagnosis and treatment of liver, breast, prostate and lung cancers; expansion of interventional pulmonology and radiology services, and broadening services for patients with Parkinson’s disease, liver and digestive disorders, and chronic back and neck pain. In 2010, robot-assisted surgery debuted as a program of the Hospital’s Institute for Advanced and Minimally Invasive Surgery.

References

External links

• New York Methodist Hospital web page