Brigham and Women's Hospital is the second largest teaching hospital of Harvard Medical School and the largest hospital in the Longwood Medical Area in Boston, Massachusetts. Along with Massachusetts General Hospital, it is one of the two founding members of Partners HealthCare, the largest healthcare provider in Massachusetts. Elizabeth Nabel serves as the hospital's current President. Brigham and Women's Hospital conducts the second largest hospital-based research program in the world, with an annual research budget of more than $630 million. Pioneering achievements at BWH have included the world's first successful heart valve operation and the world's first solid organ transplant. Brigham and Women's Hospital was established with the 1980 merger of three Harvard-affiliated hospitals: Peter Bent Brigham Hospital, Robert Breck Brigham Hospital, and Boston Hospital for Women. In the 2019 U.S. News & World Report hospital rankings, BWH was ranked second in Massachusetts and thirteenth nationally.
History
Brigham and Women's Hospital was established with the 1980 merger of three Harvard-affiliated hospitals: Peter Bent Brigham Hospital, ; Robert Breck Brigham Hospital ; and Boston Hospital for Women. In 1954, the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital became the location for the first-ever successful kidney transplant, performed by Joseph Murray on Richard Herrick. After a 10-year affiliation with Faulkner Hospital in the Jamaica Plain section of Boston, BWH merged with the community hospital in 2012 to form Brigham and Women’s Faulkner Hospital. In April 2017, Brigham and Women’s announced they would be offering voluntary buyouts to 1,600 staff in an effort to control costs. The hospital was profitable, but this move was due to higher labor and other costs amid stagnant payments from insurance companies. The hospital also needs to pay for two large projects, a $550 million new outpatient and research building that opened the previous year and a $335 million new software system that was launched in 2015. Also in April 2017, the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts announced that Brigham and Women's Hospital and its nonprofit hospital and physicians network, Partners HealthCare, agreed to pay a $10 million fine to resolve allegations that a stem cell research lab fraudulently obtained federal grant funding.
Core service lines
Dana-Farber/Brigham and Women's Cancer Center: The center brings together a cancer institute and a hospital, creating 13 specialized disease centers.
Carl J. and Ruth Shapiro Cardiovascular Center.
Brigham and Women's Orthopedic and Arthritis Center: They specialize in research and therapies for bone and joint disease and injury.
Brigham and Women's Neurosciences Institute: The BWH Neurosciences Institute offers treatments for all diseases of the nervous system. The institute integrates neurology, neurosurgery, psychiatry and neuroradiology, with advanced research and clinical trials.
Mary Horrigan Connors Center for Women's Health: BWH specializes in high-risk obstetric care, newborn intensive care, infertility services, complex gynecologic surgery, and gender-specific care.
In the early 1990s, BWH pioneered Computerized Physician Order Entry to prevent medication errors. BWH has received patient safety awards for its electronic Medication Administration Record and barcoding system, which places barcodes on patients' medications, name bands, and nurses' badges. A nurse scans all three barcodes before administering a medication to ensure that each patient receives the correct medication and dosage at the correct time. The orthopedic surgery department focused on patients' satisfaction for those who received knee and hip replacements. Leaders in the department included John Wright, Mary Anne Kenyon, and Carolyn Beagan, but they gave little attention to holding costs down.
Research
In 2013, the BWH Biomedical Research Institute received $630 million in research support from all sources. For over a decade, it has been one of the two hospitals receiving the most National Institutes of Health funding among independent hospitals in the United States. It employs over 3,300 researchers. BRI has worked on regenerative medicine, designing nanoparticles to attack different types of cancer and starting a clinical trial for a type of Alzheimer’s disease vaccine. BWH research also includes population studies including the Nurses' Health Study and Physicians' Health Study. The 21st century has seen dramatic shifts in the diagnostic and therapeutic approach to lung carcinomas, beginning with the discovery of epidermal growth factor receptor mutations and their role in directing management with targeted tyrosine kinase inhibitors. Since 2003, this has reshaped the approach at BWH's molecular diagnostic testing center. In 2017, the hospital began the first human clinical trials to reverse the aging process using NAD. The trials are headed by biologist David Andrew Sinclair. In 2019, BWH opened the Brigham Preventive Genomics Clinic, becoming one of the first hospitals in the United States to offer DNA sequencing, reporting, and interpretation of disease-associated genes to healthy patients seeking to reduce their risk of future disease.
