Bellevue Goes State-of-the-Art

Top: Bellevue’s Ambulatory Care Pavillion, designed by Pei Cobb Freed & Partners, rises in front of the original structure designed by McKim, Mead & White. Bottom: In Bellevue’s Critical Care Pavilion, each nurse monitors two patients, inside spacious rooms that enable caregivers to work safely and efficiently.

Bellevue Hospital, the nation’s first teaching hospital for the training
of physicians, has fulfilled that role for NYU School of Medicine since 1847, and to this day provides medical students with the lion’s share of their clinical training. Two recent additions to Bellevue’s facilities promise to enhance that training further with state-of-the-art design and technology.

In March 2004 a new Critical Care Pavilion was unveiled on the 10th floor of Bellevue Hospital. And in February 2005 Bellevue opened a new Ambulatory Care Pavilion on First Avenue between 27th and 28th Streets—the first structure to be built on the campus since the hospital tower was constructed in 1973.

The Ambulatory Care Pavilion, designed
by the distinguished firm of Pei Cobb Freed & Partners, features a soaring glazed atrium that links Bellevue’s past and future. Its transparent structure not only preserves views of the original Administration Building, designed by McKim, Mead & White, but symbolizes Bellevue’s long tradition of public access to quality healthcare. “By bridging the contemporary with the historic,” says Carlos F. Perez, Executive Director of Bellevue Hospital, “we are reinforcing Bellevue’s vital presence within the city.”

The Ambulatory Care Pavilion consolidates some 90 clinics previously located throughout Bellevue. With more than 400 exam rooms on five floors, it will serve more than 1,000 outpatients daily, aiming to provide care to each visitor in about an hour or less. Bellevue’s new ICU serves a decidedly smaller group: the sickest of the sick. Its 56 rooms—each measuring more than 240 square feet—contain 40 critical care beds and 16 step-down beds.

One of the largest and most sophisticated facilities of its kind in the country, the new ICU has set a new standard of excellence for critical care design and technology. Patient rooms are equipped with two types of state-of-the-art machinery. An overhead delivery system—the first major installation of its kind in New York City—allows medical equipment to swivel 360 degrees around the bed. A computerized patient charting system, which captures and archives the patient’s vital signs, lab results, radiographs, pharmaceutical orders, and medical history, permits caregivers throughout the hospital to securely access this information.

The Critical Care Pavilion consolidates four units that were previously located on separate floors, providing medical, surgical, neurosurgical, and cardiac critical care in one multidisciplinary setting with its own dedicated pharmacy. “By having all four ICU’s on the same floor, we can more easily draw on the expertise of each one,” says Jeffrey A. Gold, M.D., Medical Director of Critical Care for Bellevue. “And by having all 56 beds as step-down capable, we can bring care to the patient rather than the other way around.”