“I knew then that the light of the new would go hand-in-hand with the grandeur of the past.”
New Haven was a harbor town of about 5,000 residents, many engaged in shipbuilding and trade. Yale University, which opened in 1701, brought an educational, intellectual and scientific element to the city. The economy started to shift from maritime trade toward manufacturing, led by key inventions from Yale graduate Eli Whitney. Chartered in 1810, the Medical Institution of Yale College (today the Yale School of Medicine) opened in 1813.
A group of prominent physicians and merchants from New Haven petitioned the Connecticut General Assembly to create a state hospital in the city. The bill was signed by the governor on May 31, 1826, and established “The General Hospital Society of Connecticut“ to be affiliated with the Medical Institution of Yale College. The General Hospital Society of Connecticut, also referred to as the state hospital, became the first non-profit hospital in Connecticut - the fourth in the nation after those founded in Pennsylvania, New York and Massachusetts.
Hospital leaders began serious fundraising efforts, securing a $5,000 grant from the Connecticut State Legislature and monies from the Marine fund, established by Congress in 1798 to care for sick and injured sailors, given the prevalence of infectious diseases spread by sailors in seaport cities like New Haven.
The hospital rented a building, formed a Board of Directors, developed by-laws and began the search for suitable land. Two years later, the Board of Directors purchased 12 acres in New Haven with plans to construct a three-story, granite Greek revival hospital designed by New Haven architect and engineer Ithiel Towne.
was quick to adopt the use of anesthesia, pioneered in medicine by Hartford dentist Horace Wells. Surgery was performed on the top floor of Old North, as the original building came to be called, relying on the light from a skylight.
During the Civil War, the U.S. government commandeered the hospital and temporarily renamed it after founding physician Dr. Jonathan Knight. The “Knight U.S. Army General Hospital” cared for Civil War soldiers, many of whom were housed in tents on the grounds. Of the 25,340 soldiers treated there throughout the war, only 185 died. Civilian patients were treated in a private house on Whalley Avenue.
With the Industrial Revolution, New Haven turned to manufacturing with factories located near railroad spurs and harbors. The Visitors Report noted an increasing number of patients required surgery due to industrial accidents: “Large manufacturing establishments necessarily bring to a community a considerable hand-to-mouth population, who do well enough in health, but have saved nothing for sickness.” The Board of Directors authorized $75,000 for the expansion of hospital buildings.
Connecticut Training School for Nurses was chartered as one of three nursing schools patterned after the school Florence Nightingale had established in England in 1860.
First major addition: The East and West wings opened, adding 126 additional beds. The third story housed the Connecticut Training School nursing students. Today, the East wing is the only remaining building from the 19th century construction.
The Medical Board recommended the hospital purchase a horse-drawn ambulance.
The name State Hospital was officially changed to New Haven Hospital, as a second hospital, Grace Hospital, was established in Connecticut.
Mrs. Henry Farnam made a donation to build the Farnam Operating Amphitheatre in memory of her son Dr. George Bronson Farnam (1841-1886). Her husband, Henry Walcott Farnam, was a Yale professor and president of New Haven Hospital during the hospital’s Centenary in 1926.
Construction began for the Gifford Chapel and the 20-bed Ellen M. Gifford Home for the Incurables, completed in 1892.
Ellen Marett Gifford donated more than $1 million to the hospital. She was also very attentive to the needs of African American patients, making several provisions for their social and medical needs.
Grace Hospital established the Grace School of Nursing.
In 1945, after Grace Hospital merged with New Haven Hospital, it was renamed the Grace-New Haven School of Nursing. In 1975, the last and 78th class graduated, having educated 1,945 graduates before it closed.
Arthur Wright, Yale physicist, produces first American X-ray, barely a month after German physicist Wilhelm Roentgen produced the world’s first X-rays.
During the Spanish-American War, the hospital treated 202 soldiers, many suffering from typhoid fever. Two isolation pavilions and three tents were filled and the Gifford Chapel was turned into a ward. Of the 100 with typhoid fever only 14 died. Three years later, a typhoid outbreak, which affected the city's watershed, sickened hundreds. Of the 96 cases treated at the hospital, only 17 died.
The Maternity Ward, also known as the South Ward, opened between the Farnam Operating Ampitheatre and a nursing dormitory. The first floor had 14 beds for expectant mothers, and the second floor had 12 beds, labor and delivery rooms, and a 15-bed nursery.
Although physical therapy did not become a specialty until World War I at Walter Reed Army Hospital, it was incorporated into treatment at New Haven Hospital since at least 1908. The American Physical Therapy Association was not founded until 1921.
New Haven Hospital President Eli Whitney received a gift of $300,000 from an anonymous donor to purchase land for a tuberculosis hospital. Lion Park on Campbell Avenue in West Haven was purchased as the site; it was followed by a second $300,000 gift from the same donor. While plans were being drawn, the Visiting Nurse Association started a day camp for children affected by tuberculosis at the park. The Hospital later assumed management of Camp Happyland.
First formal agreement between the hospital and Yale medical school, creating full-time positions for Yale faculty physicians which allowed them to assume care of patients in the hospital’s general and semi-private wards. This laid the groundwork for New Haven Hospital to become a teaching hospital.
The hospital bought its first motorized ambulance, seven years after Henry Ford began producing the Model T.
New Haven Hospital was the first in the state to create a dental department, appointing Dr. Elwyn R. Bryant as the hospital dentist, recognizing the mouth as a major source of infection. He instituted dental examinations as part of routine care.
The growing use of X-rays at New Haven Hospital led to a new X-ray department, with a waiting room, fluoroscopic room, X-ray room and equipment. Within a year the X-ray department outgrew its space.
Construction began for the tuberculosis hospital, with a generous donation from Sarah Pardee Winchester, wife of William Wirt Winchester, son of Oliver Winchester who founded the Winchester Repeating Arms Company in New Haven. William, treasurer of the company and heir to the Winchester fortune, died of tuberculosis in 1881 at the age of 43.
The Spanish influenza began and raged for three years, leading to 1,451 admissions and 388 deaths. The hospital was full to capacity and at times had to rent houses in the neighborhood but not a single patient was denied admission.
The William Wirt Winchester Hospital for Tuberculosis opened but was taken over by the U.S. government for use as a military hospital during World War I. After the war, it continued to be used for veterans and was purchased by the U.S. Government in 1948. The Winchester legacy lives on through a fund that supports the Winchester Center for Lung Disease at Yale New Haven Hospital to this day.
New Haven Hospital created a department of pediatrics, 13 years before the American Board of Pediatrics was founded to raise the standards of pediatric care.
The Yale School of Nursing was founded with funding through a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation, as the world’s first graduate nursing school – a school within a university to prepare nurses under an educational rather than an apprenticeship program.
Yale School of Nursing Dormitory on Park Street
Sterling Hall of Medicine opened on Cedar Street, bringing a closer physical presence between the medical school and the hospital.
New Haven Hospital opened the first hospital-based tumor registry in the U.S. It has collected data on the diagnosis and treatment of cancer for 100 years, serving as a core resource for clinical, epidemiological and laboratory investigations in cancer.
Construction started on the impressive six-story Clinic Building, which provided a stately new front entrance to the hospital when it opened in 1932.
The seven-story Raleigh Fitkin Memorial Pavilion opened - in recognition that children’s care was unique. A gift from Abram E. Fitkin in memory of his 10-year-old son who had died from a ruptured appendix, the pavilion was designed to link with the new Clinic Building. Built by Yale, it was transferred to the hospital in 1952.
The Yale Poliomyelitis Unit opened as one of only five facilities in the U.S. dedicated to solving the mystery surrounding polio. Drs. James Trask and John Rodman Paul directed the program. But it was their colleague Dr. Dorothy Horstmann who determined the polio virus reached the nervous system by way of the circulatory system - which paved the way for polio vaccines in the mid-1950s.
New Haven Hospital introduced the use of stainless steel instruments in this urology surgery procedure, instead of the white enamel instruments which had to be replaced every three months. Stainless steel instruments could withstand repeated sterilization, greatly improving infection control.
The hospital began one of the nation’s first organized volunteer programs in the country, a protype for virtually all modern hospitals. Later, in 1942 with the U.S. entry into WWII, the hospital faced staffing shortages. The hospital hired Bettina Jones as the first full-time paid director of volunteers at any U.S. hospital. She started the Men’s Volunteer Corps, Junior Volunteers and Yale Aides programs.
The Winchester Hospital for Tuberculosis closed due to fewer TB patients, thanks to antibiotic treatments.
The U.S. Army Air Force used the facility as a military hospital in 1943. The U.S. government bought it in 1948, and today it is the West Haven Veterans Affairs Medical Center.
New Haven Hospital was the first hospital in the U.S. to successfully use penicillin to treat a life-threatening infection. Within 24 hours after receiving her first shot, 33-year-old Anne Miller, who had a raging strep infection, saw her temperature return to normal for the first time in weeks. She lived to the age of 90. In this 1945 photo, she is pictured with Alexander Fleming, who discovered penicillin, and Francis G. Blake, dean of the Yale medical school.
Louis S. Goodman, MD, and Alfred Gilman, PhD, assistant professors in Yale’s new Department of Pharmacology, began to study nitrogen mustard, a derivative of the deadly mustard gas used in World War I, in the hopes of finding an antidote. The two accidentally found that the mustard gas could shrink cancerous tumors, essentially uncovering the first effective chemotherapy for cancer.
The U.S. General Hospital Unit Number 39 was comprised of 59 men and 101 women from New Haven Hospital who volunteered to serve in World War II, including 55 surgeons and physicians and 39 nurses.
Nearby Grace Hospital, struggling financially, affiliated with New Haven Hospital to form Grace-New Haven Community Hospital. After the medical and nursing staffs merged, the hospital inherited the Grace School of Nursing.
Child psychiatrist Dr. Edith Jackson directed the Yale Rooming-in Research Project at Grace-New Haven Community Hospital (1946 - 1953). She established the first rooming-in model of maternal and infant care in a U.S. hospital, allowing babies to stay in rooms with mothers, to facilitate early parent-child bonding.
Life magazine (January 30, 1950) devoted the cover story to Grace-New Haven Hospital as the first hospital in the U.S. to introduce natural childbirth as a general service.
Using parts from an Erector Set toy building set and other odds and ends, cardiac surgeon William W.L. Glenn, MD, and Yale medical student William Sewall Jr., developed the first artificial heart pump in the U.S. at Grace-New Haven Hospital – which became the prototype of the heart-lung machine and the artificial heart. Their working model is displayed at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC. Dr. Glenn later performed Connecticut’s first open heart surgery at Grace-New Haven Hospital in 1956.
The 346-bed Memorial Unit (known today as the East Pavilion) opened, featuring modern semi-private and four-bed rooms, a 96-bassinet nursery, a seven-room operating suite and modern radiology unit. Planners showed foresight by including the capacity to add two more floors onto the building, which was completed in 1972.
Building on his earlier research on electronic fetal heart monitoring at Yale in the 1930s, obstetrician Dr. Orvan Hess collaborated with postdoctoral fellow Edward Hon to develop the first fetal heart monitor.
Dr. William Glenn developed a surgical technique that greatly improved the survival rate of patients with congenital cardiac malformations. The “Glenn Shunt” connects the superior vena cava directly into the lung artery, allowing blood to partially bypass the right heart, obtain oxygen in the lungs and provide the body with oxygenated blood.
Yale dermatologist Dr. Aaron Lerner and his team discovered and named melatonin, the hormone produced by the pineal gland, and with it, the understanding that melatonin is linked to circadian rhythms, jet lag and seasonal affective disorder.
Grace-New Haven Hospital opened the world’s first newborn intensive care unit under the direction of neonatologist Louis Gluck, MD, combining healthy, premature babies with sick infants who needed special care.
The hospital installed a six million-electron-volt linear accelerator in Hunter Radiation Center – the first in Connecticut and one of only six in existence at the time.
An agreement between Grace-New Haven Hospital and Yale School of Medicine (YSM), formalized their relationship and the hospital changed its name to Yale New Haven Hospital. The collaboration allowed the institutions to provide clinical care jointly, conduct undergraduate and graduate medical education, and facilitate clinical research.
YNHH opened the state’s - and possibly the nation’s - first pediatric intensive care unit, with advances in pediatric general surgery, cardiac surgery and anesthesiology a driving factor.
Dr. William Glenn, working with Dr. Alexander Mauro, developed the first radiofrequency diaphragm pacemaker, leading to the development of the phrenic nerve pacemaker which allowed quadriplegic patients to breathe without a respirator.
Yale New Haven Hospital established one of the nation’s earliest Child Life programs to help children and families cope with the stresses of illness, injury and hospitalization through play, education and emotional support.
The first successful kidney transplant in Connecticut was performed on a former WWII Polish fighter pilot by Dr. Bernard Lytton, with support from nephrologist Dr. Howard Levitin and urologist Dr. Martin Schiff.
Obstetrician John Hobbins and geneticist Maurice Mahoney developed a fiberoptic endoscope - or fetoscope - at Yale New Haven Hospital, which allowed prenatal diagnosis of inherited blood disorders. Fetoscopy would go on to evolve from a diagnostic tool to a minimally invasive surgical technique in the 1990s, enabling diagnosis and treatment in utero.
Dr. Howard Pearson started the first hospital-based newborn screening program at Yale New Haven Hospital for sickle cell anemia in the U.S. Today it is part of routine newborn screening programs in every state. This universal screening helps in early identification of sickle cell disease, which allows prompt medical interventions that can reduce complications and mortality.
Yale New Haven Hospital joined forces with the West Haven Veterans Administration Hospital to form one of the oldest, most comprehensive clinical epilepsy centers in the U.S.
Neurosurgeon Dr. Dennis Spencer and his team founded the Yale Comprehensive Epilepsy Center in 1977, where he pioneered epilepsy surgery techniques for temporal lobe epilepsy, and developed the most commonly used technique for removing parts of the temporal lobe.
The Primary Care Center opened at 789 Howard Ave. to provide routine and preventive care for community patients, post-emergency room follow-ups and referrals to specialty care.
YNHH rheumatologists Stephen E. Malawista and Allen Steere identified and named Lyme Disease, which opened a path for diagnosis, treatment and prevention of a puzzling, potentially debilitating disease.
YNHH had the largest ultrasound testing center in the country - directed by British ultrasound pioneer Dr. Kenneth JW Taylor, who came to Yale to research diagnostic ultrasonography three years earlier. He founded the hospital’s School of Diagnostic Ultrasound to train technologists in the new modality.
Drs. William Tamborlane and Robert Sherwin at YNHH developed the first portable insulin pump, transforming the treatment of type 1 diabetes. Their trial was the first to demonstrate that continuous insulin infusion could provide dramatically improved control of Type 1 diabetes.
YNHH was the first hospital in Connecticut to receive designation as a Regional Trauma Center from the Emergency Medical Services Council, Inc. of South Central Connecticut, as part of a national program funded by the Department of Health, Education and Welfare in the federal government’s early efforts to create regional trauma systems. YNHH was responsible for a 20-town region.
YNHH was designated as a Trauma Center by the American College of Surgeons. In 1994 YNHH became the state’s first Level-1 designated Trauma Center.
The hospital started a geriatric clinic, which developed into one of the most comprehensive geriatric centers in the country.
YNHH opened the New Facility, a seven-story inpatient building, now called the South Pavilion.
While many healthcare facilities reacted slowly and apprehensively to the AIDS epidemic, YNHH opened the first AIDS clinic in Connecticut and became a leader in AIDS care.
YNHH opened a Maternal Special Care Unit, one of the first in the country, to treat high-risk pregnancies.
YNHH delivered the first quintuplets in New England. Born more than three months premature, four of the five babies survived, and after three months in the Newborn Special Care Unit, were able to go home.
Drs. Wayne Flye and Richard Gusberg performed the state’s first liver transplant on a six-year-old girl from New Haven with biliary atresia.
The hospital delivered the first in vitro fertilization birth in New England.
The Yale Skin Bank was the first in the Northeast to provide skin grafts for burn patients. Researchers developed a technique where severely burned patients could be temporarily protected with donated cadaver skin while new quantities of their own skin were grown in the lab - a procedure now in use worldwide.
Connecticut’s first heart transplant was performed at YNHH with a team of six surgeons under the direction of Drs. Sabet Hashim and Alexander Geha.
YNHH opened the nation’s first fetal cardiovascular center.
Opened the first hospital-based children’s psychiatric inpatient unit in the state, providing psychiatric, psychosocial and educational services for children between the ages of 4 and 14.
YNHH was one of 13 hospitals in the country authorized to administer the clot-busting drug tPA to emergency room patients with heart attacks in the first large-scale clinical trial.
Dr. Wayne Flye performed a successful liver transplant on the youngest patient to receive a liver transplant - a 100-day-old infant with tyrosinemia, a rare enzyme deficiency.
YNHH opened the first magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) center in Connecticut.
Under the direction of Dr. Richard Edelson, photopheresis, a blood-filtering treatment, was first used at Yale New Haven to treat cutaneous T-cell lymphoma, and a year later, to treat scleroderma, making it the first approved cellular immunotherapy for cancer.
YNHH introduced New England’s first mobile mammography van. YNHH’s newest mammography van is the first mobile unit in the country to offer 3-D tomosynthesis and breast ultrasound at community and corporate locations around the state.
Chief of Staff Dr. John Fenn and cardiothoracic surgeon Dr. John Baldwin spoke with the media after YNHH performed the state’s first heart-lung transplant.
Doctors at Yale New Haven Hospital performed the first adult and pediatric bone marrow transplants in Connecticut.
Dr. William A. Marks made transplant history with the state’s first pancreas transplant. The recipient was a 40-year-old man from Meriden who had been on insulin since he was 13.
Opened the state’s first Pediatric Sleep Center.
Within the span of 24 hours, Yale New Haven cardiothoracic surgeons performed New England’s first single lung transplant and also conducted the region’s first implant of a left ventricular assist device (LVAD) - a mechanical heart assist device.
The hospital was first in the state to use ECMO (Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation), life-saving medical technology that supports an infant’s heart and/or lungs when they are unable to function adequately
Opened Yale New Haven Children’s Hospital, the first comprehensive children’s hospital in Connecticut.
Yale New Haven Hospital and Bridgeport Hospital announced an affiliation, joining two of the state’s largest hospitals and placing Yale New Haven Health System among the top 50 largest in the country.
Big Apple Circus created Connecticut’s first Clown Care Unit at Yale New Haven Children’s Hospital, helping pediatric patients cope with illness by re-introducing laughter and play into their lives.
YNHH offered Connecticut’s first Gamma Knife in Smilow Cancer Hospital’s dedicated stereotactic radiosurgery center - a neurosurgical tool for the treatment of brain tumors and blood vessel malformations.
YNHH discharged the first patient in New England home with an implantable left ventricular assist device (LVAD,) which signaled the end of lengthy hospital stays for patients awaiting heart transplants.
Greenwich Hospital - a 206-bed regional medical center hospital, serving Fairfield County, Connecticut and Westchester County, New York - became the third hospital to join Yale New Haven Health System.
YNHH created the Yale New Haven Psychiatric Hospital after it acquired the Yale Psychiatric Institute.
Researchers at Yale completed the first randomized, controlled trial of single-dose intravenous ketamine in people with depression. Ketamine, first used in in the 1960s as an anesthetic, produced rapid antidepressant effects within hours, unlike traditional antidepressants that took weeks to work.
YNHCH children’s emergency department was designated as a Level-1 Regional Children’s Trauma Center.
YNHH became the first hospital in Connecticut to use drug-coated stents during angioplasty, which reduced the rate of patients experiencing a re-narrowing of the artery, and also the first in New England to implant the Jarvik 2000 ventricular assist device into a patient.
Yale New Haven opened Connecticut’s first Adult Congenital Heart Program to care for patients who survived congenital heart disease as children, providing inpatient and outpatient services to the most complex adult congenital heart patients, offering imaging, exercise testing and catheterization therapies.
YNHH became the first in New England to participate in a clinical trial of the Pro-disc C disc replacement arthroplasty treatment for alleviating severe neck and back pain caused by herniated discs, instead of undergoing spinal fusion.
Bringing services into the community, the hospital opened the YNHH Shoreline Medical Center in Guilford, offering surgery, radiology, laboratory medicine, radiation oncology, medical oncology and cardiology services and breast center, along with an emergency department that expanded to 24/7 operation in 2008.
First in Connecticut to perform split-liver transplants and living-donor liver transplants.
First in Connecticut to perform an “invisible incision” appendectomy, known as “Natural Orifice Transluminal Endoscopic Surgery (NOTES),” in which surgery is performed through the body’s natural openings.
The medical staff sponsored their first Habitat for Humanity house in New Haven, with financial support and help from employees and physicians who volunteered to work on the house. Over the next several years, YNHH sponsored 12 Habitat houses in New Haven.
Under the direction of Dr. Joseph Schindler, YNHH launched the first telestroke program in Connecticut with Lawrence + Memorial Hospital in New London to facilitate rapid assessment and treatment of acute stroke symptoms, so clot-dissolving medication can be administered and often patients can remain in their local hospital. It was a precursor to future uses of telemedicine.
The 14-story Smilow Cancer Hospital at Yale New Haven opened. Affiliated with Yale Cancer Center, Smilow integrates all oncology services at the hospital and Yale School of Medicine in one building designed for the comprehensive delivery of cancer care.
YNHH became the only Connecticut hospital to be designated as a Cycle III Chest Pain Center with PCI (Percutaneous Coronary Intervention), the highest level of accreditation given by the Society of Chest Pain Centers.
The Aortic Institute at Yale New Haven - the first in Connecticut, and among the first and largest formally designated centers of its kind in the world - is established for the care of patients with aneurysms.
YNHH received Nurse Magnet recognition by the American Nurses Credentialing Center. Only six percent of the nation’s hospitals earn this prestigious honor for excellence in nursing care. YNHH was recertified in 2016 and 2021.
Yale New Haven Hospital acquired the assets of the Hospital of Saint Raphael, adding 533 beds and 3,500 employees - making it a two-campus facility and one of the largest hospitals in the United States. Founded in 1907, the Hospital of Saint Raphael was started by the Sisters of Charity of Saint Elizabeth at the request of a group of local physicians, led by Dr. William F. Verdi. The doctors asked the Sisters of Charity to administer a hospital that would "receive and care for all patients who might apply for admission without regard to creed or race: To extend charity to the sick, poor, and to offer the institution to those of the medical profession who desire to care for their own patients.
Smilow Cancer Hospital and Yale Cancer Center opened eight Smilow Cancer Care Centers in Connecticut, soon be 10: Derby, Fairfield, Guilford, North Haven, Old Saybrook, Orange, Torrington, Trumbull, Waterbury and Hamden.
YNHH opened the North Haven Medical Center offering walk-in care, treatment of chronic conditions, cancer care, laboratory and blood-draw services, onsite MRI, fluoroscopy and digital X-ray imaging, and Smilow outpatient medical oncology and hematology. YNHH collaborated with Columbus House, New Haven’s largest homeless shelter, to open the first Medical Respite Program in Connecticut, offering acute and post-acute care in a 12-bed unit at the shelter for people experiencing homelessness not ill enough to remain in a hospital but too ill to recover on the streets.
YNHH unveiled two of the region’s most advanced orthopedic operating rooms as part of the Center for Musculoskeletal Care on the Saint Raphael Campus, an ambulatory surgical facility.
Yale New Haven Hospital surgeons and interventionalists the first in Connecticut to offer the transcatheter aortic valve replacement (TAVR) procedure for heart failure patients.
The State of Connecticut approved the affiliation of L+M Healthcare and Yale New Haven Health System, bringing Lawrence + Memorial and Westerly hospitals into YNHHS as a corporate member.
YNHH performed Connecticut’s first multi-patient kidney transplant exchange led by Dr. Sanjay Kulkarni with eight-patients. Four Connecticut residents received new kidneys from living donors.
Yale New Haven performed Connecticut’s largest, and one of the nation’s largest, multi-patient living donor swaps at one center. YNHH’s Transplantation Center successfully transplanted 18 patients.
Opened one of the most advanced neonatal intensive care units (NICU) in the country, with a sophisticated procedure room and new technology systems which instantaneously transmit data and alarms from isolette monitors and bedside equipment to staff. YNHCH was the first academic medical center in the U.S. to offer couplet rooms in the NICU, where postpartum mothers and their babies who require neonatal intensive care remain together.
For exceptional commitment to community health through sustainable programs that promoted engagement, job growth and healthcare access, Yale New Haven Hospital received the 2017 Foster G. McGaw Prize from the Baxter International Foundation and American Hospital Association.
Yale New Haven Children’s Hospital became the first Connecticut hospital certified by the United Network of Organ Sharing (UNOS) to perform pediatric heart transplants.
2019: YNHH opened new Labor and Birth and Maternal Special Care units, including three operating rooms, 11 labor and birthing rooms, 17 maternal special care patient rooms for women with high-risk pregnancies, four recovery rooms, eight triage rooms and a neonatal resuscitation room.
2020s and Beyond
With confirmation of YNHH’s first COVID-19 patient on March 16, YNHH activated the hospital’s command center to ensure adequate supplies and staffing needed for safe patient and staff care. YNHH overhauled facilities, operations and staffing to provide information, testing and care to thousands.
YNHH performed state’s first outpatient ambulatory center robotic hernia repair in just under two hours at the YNHH Shoreline Medical Center, using the latest technology, the da Vinci Xi.
YNHH became the first in the region, and one of only a handful of hospitals nationwide, to offer the invasive cardiopulmonary exercise test (iCPET) which shows how well the heart, lungs, blood vessels and muscles perform during exercise, and can diagnose and determine the severity of various cardiovascular and respiratory conditions.
YNHH opened a Post-COVID-19 Recovery Program to treat long-term respiratory and neurological symptoms associated with COVID-19. A similar program began for children who had lingering COVID-19 symptoms lasting over three months.
YNHH opened the Primary Care Medical Center on Sargent Drive, in partnership between Yale New Haven Hospital, Cornell Scott-Hill Health Center and Fair Haven Community Health Care. It consolidated services and provides primary care, women’s health, pediatrics, radiology and blood draw services.
In January 2021, state officials asked healthcare organizations to help vaccinate the public. Between January 22 and 27, YNHHS opened eight community COVID-19 mass vaccination clinics across the state, and within a few days, these clinics had vaccinated more than 4,000 people, 75 and older.
Construction began on the Yale New Haven Hospital Neurosciences Center on the Saint Raphael Campus to build a 505,000-square-foot, eight-story building which will be the largest of its kind in the state for patients seeking innovative care for neurological conditions. The center will include 102 patient rooms and an underground garage.
YNHH became the first hospital in Connecticut to offer robotic bronchoscopy with shape-sensing technology, which allows doctors to see even small nodules in areas of the lung that are extremely difficult or risky to reach, helping physicians diagnose lung cancer more safely, accurately and earlier.
YNHH was the first in Connecticut to perform the transcatheter tricuspid valve repair, a groundbreaking therapy.
The PERT Consortium, a leading authority in pulmonary embolism care, designated YNHH as one of the first of three Pulmonary Embolism Comprehensive Care Centers of Excellence in the world.
Smilow Cancer Hospital at Yale New Haven successfully delivered the world’s first radiotherapy treatment plan that efficiently combines different radiotherapy modalities to treat a patient with metastatic cancer. Multi-target treatment (MTT) enables physicians to combine biology-guided radiotherapy, a new modality for tumors in the lung or bone, with conventional stereotactic body radiotherapy for solid tumors in other body locations.
In a unique joint venture, Yale New Haven Health and Hartford HealthCare broke ground
on the Connecticut Proton Therapy Center in Wallingford. This advanced therapy uses a high-energy beam of protons to irradiate many solid cancer tumors of the brain and central nervous system, eye, gastrointestinal tract, head and neck, liver, lung, prostate, spine and breast.
YNHH’s ECMO (Extra Corporeal Membrane Oxygenation) team was the first in the country to use a new compact life support system, the Medtronic Vital Flow ECMO system, while transporting a patient with heart and lung failure by ambulance from Greenwich Hospital to YNHH.
YNHH Heart and Vascular Center physicians performed the state’s first BATMAN procedure (Balloon-Assisted Translocation of the Mitral Anterior Leaflet), a novel way to treat patients with severe mitral valve regurgitations who are unable to have open-heart surgery.
YNHH became the first medical center in New England, and only the fifth in the nation, to use the Symani Surgical System robot for microsurgery and supermicrosurgery. designed to treat complex problems in the field of reconstructive surgery, lymphatic surgery, peripheral nerve repair and trauma.
The new, 505,000-square-foot Adams Neurosciences Center, slated to open in 2027 on the Saint Raphael Campus, will fulfill a mission of providing a unique setting for patients seeking innovative care – from treatment for movement disorders to procedures for neuroregeneration.
