‘Throwaway People’ Get the Best at Famous Hospital : New York’s Bellevue Is 250 Years Old

Through the dingy emergency rooms of Bellevue Hospital passes the underside of New York City--the victims of grisly crimes and accidents, the homeless and the criminally insane.

The sprawling hospital complex on the East River has built a reputation on treating the worst New York has to offer with the best care imaginable, say Bellevue administrators and staff who are celebrating its 250th anniversary this year.

“We deal with the throwaway people, the people who have no family or friends and we treat them with all the dignity possible,” said nurse Kay O’Boyle who has worked in Bellevue’s emergency rooms since 1967.

‘It Grows on You’

“I’ll admit it’s a little frustrating when you’ve worked for hours to save a drug addict’s life and he wakes up cursing you out for ‘stealing’ his high,” she said with a sigh. “But this place is like a fungus, it grows on you.”

“Taken to Bellevue” is a line in a hundred crime news stories, shoot-em-up movies and cop television shows, say hospital officials who alternately glory in the fame and despair at the image of their hospital as a way station for the criminally insane.

“Hollywood and the media have forced on us the image of a psychiatric institution when in reality that’s only a part of what we do,” said hospital executive director Ronald Milch, across whose desk pass letters from around the world postmarked simply ‘Hospital, U.S.A.’

“We’re sort of like Santa at the North Pole,” he said. “When people think of New York and hospital they think of us. We are the first.”

First Public Hospital

As this country’s first public hospital, Bellevue has a long history and a string of medical firsts, including the first ambulance and the first professional nursing school. It was the first hospital to use hypodermic syringes, establish a sanitary code and insist that patients be pronounced dead by a qualified physician.

New York City started the hospital in 1736 as a six-bed ward on the top floor of an almshouse near City Hall. In the early 1800’s the hospital was moved to a site along the East River named Belle Vue Place, where it has expanded to a sprawling complex of red brick buildings, high-rise towers and parking garages.

In an average year it is estimated that 100,000 people pass through Bellevue’s four emergency rooms. About 30,000 are admitted to the hospital and 500,000 patients are treated in its 87 outpatient clinics.

Patients on gurneys are usually double parked in the halls of Bellevue’s emergency rooms, which are in need of new paint but do have state-of-the-art medical equipment.

Main Hall Is Crowded

On any given day, the main hall through the complex is crowded with people--some running, some on crutches, some well-heeled, others obviously indigent and still others in the dress of their native countries.

A recent study showed that 1,500 people an hour pass down this main hall, making television’s fictional “St. Elsewhere” sedate by comparison.

“Every hospital has a personality,” Milch said. “Ours is infectious--no pun intended.

“People here may get frustrated and burned out but they end up loving the place,” he said. “There’s a lot of reverence and respect tied up in Bellevue.”