Elmhurst Hospital
79-01 Broadway | also 80-02 41st Avenue, 80-05 Baxter Avenue | Elmhurst | built 1949
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The city photographed every building for its tax records around 1940 and again in the 1980s. NYC Municipal Archives.
Written with AI from the source each entry cites, then fact-checked.
- 1957
Elmhurst General Hospital opens, carrying on the work of the old City Hospital
The new hospital opened on March 18, 1957, as Elmhurst General Hospital, taking over the operations of City Hospital, a public hospital for the poor founded in 1832 on what is now Roosevelt Island. Queens was short of ambulances at the time, so two were delivered to Elmhurst that June and began running in August. Its psychiatric ward, delayed for lack of staff, did not open until April 1958.
“The hospital initially was known as the Elmhurst General Hospital when it opened on March 18, 1957.”
Source: Wikipedia
- 1975
Elmhurst Hospital starts a language bank of interpreters for its many-tongued patients
In 1975 the hospital set up a "language bank" of 50 to 60 interpreters covering more than 20 languages spoken by the 700,000 people in its catchment area. Before then, care in any language but English depended on whether a staff member happened to speak it. By 2005 The New York Times reported that the hospital's 500,000 yearly patients spoke more than 100 languages or dialects, and about half needed an interpreter.
“In 1975, a "language bank" was founded at Elmhurst Hospital, with 50 to 60 interpreters providing service in over 20 languages…”
Source: Wikipedia
- 1978
Three respirator patients' deaths spark a homicide inquiry and a hiring of 50 nurses
By the late 1970s Elmhurst Hospital was short of both nurses and intensive care beds. Three patients on respirators died, and a homicide investigation followed, though the hospital's doctors and administrators blamed the shortage of staff and beds. In 1978 the hospital, then treating 20,000 patients a year, hired 50 additional nurses.
“The shortage led to the deaths of three patients who were connected to respirators, which in turn prompted a homicide investigation…”
Source: Wikipedia
- 2020
Elmhurst Hospital becomes the "center of the center" of New York's COVID-19 outbreak
Already running at 80 percent capacity, the hospital's beds filled quickly as COVID-19 reached New York in March 2020, and patients without the virus were sent elsewhere. Thirteen people died there in a single day, at least one while waiting for a bed. The hospital rented a refrigerator truck as a morgue, put up tents, received 40 ventilators from the city on top of its 63, and got 40 BiPAP machines from Tesla.
Source: Wikipedia
Further reading
- Elmhurst Hospital CenterWikipedia
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