10 Things to Know About Brigham and Women's Hospital

Boston is an international hub for hospital care and medicine, and Brigham and Women's Hospital fits within that landscape.

Here are 10 things to know about Brigham and Women's Hospital, which is a teaching affiliate of Harvard Medical School and part of Partners HealthCare.

1. Elizabeth Nabel, MD, has been the president of BWH since January 2010. Dr. Nabel is a cardiologist and former director of the National Institutes of Health's Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute.

2. Michael Reney serves as CFO of BWH and first began his career at BWH in 1990 as an accounting supervisor.

3. BWH has 793 beds and several outpatient clinics, primary care health centers, and diagnostic and research laboratories scattered throughout New England.

4. The hospital employs more than 15,000 people, which includes 3,000 physicians, fellows and residents, 1,000 researchers and 2,800 nurses.

5. Total revenue reached almost $5.2 billion last year, and BWH recorded a net income of $112.1 million for a 2.2 percent profit margin.

6. Inpatient admissions last year totaled 46,000, and ambulatory visits reached 3.5 million. BWH's emergency department treats 59,000 patients, and roughly 9,000 babies are born every year, making BWH the largest birthing center in New England.

7. For the past 19 years, BWH has made it to U.S. News & World Report's Honor Roll of America's Best Hospitals and consistently earns other awards in patient care and for having highly recognized physicians.

8. BWH's roots date back to 1832, when it opened its doors as the Boston Lying-In Hospital for women who couldn't afford in-home medical care, making it one of the first maternity hospitals in the United States. BWH actually is the product of a merger of three of the oldest Harvard teaching hospitals: the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital, the Robert Breck Brigham Hospital and the Boston Hospital for Women.

9. A slew of medical firsts occurred at BWH, such as the first usage of anesthesia in childbirth in a hospital setting in 1847 and the first usage of cortisone for patients with rheumatoid arthritis in 1949. Harvey Cushing, MD, the father of modern neurosurgery, also was based at BWH.

10. Other notable medical firsts include the following: In 1954, the first successful human organ transplant, a kidney transplanted from one identical twin to another, was accomplished. In 1990, Joseph Murray, MD, received the Nobel Prize for this work and the subsequent development of immunosuppressive drugs. And in 2009, a 35-member surgical team at BWH performed a partial face transplant, the second such procedure performed in the U.S.

If you have additional information you'd like included on the hospital featured above or would like to recommend a hospital to be profiled in the future, please contact Lindsey Dunn, editor in chief,
Becker's Hospital Review at ldunn@beckershealthcare.com.

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