Massachusetts General Hospital


Massachusetts General Hospital is a teaching hospital located in the West End neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts. It is the original and largest clinical education and research facility of Harvard Medical School/Harvard University, and houses the world's largest hospital-based research program with an annual research budget of more than $1.2 billion in 2021. It is the third-oldest general hospital in the United States with a patient capacity of 999 beds. Along with Brigham and Women's Hospital, Mass General is a founding member of Mass General Brigham, formerly known as Partners HealthCare, the largest healthcare provider in Massachusetts.

History

Founded in 1811, the original hospital was designed by the famous American architect Charles Bulfinch. It is the third-oldest general hospital in the United States; only Pennsylvania Hospital and NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital's predecessor New York Hospital are older. John Warren, Professor of Anatomy and Surgery at Harvard Medical School, spearheaded the move of the medical school to Boston. Warren's son, John Collins Warren, a graduate of the University of Edinburgh Medical School, along with James Jackson, led the efforts to start the Massachusetts General Hospital, which was initially proposed in 1810 by Rev. John Bartlett, the Chaplain of the Almshouse in Boston. Because all those who had sufficient money were cared for at home, Massachusetts General Hospital, like most hospitals that were founded in the 19th century, was intended to care for the poor. A 30-year-old sailor was the first patient admitted to the hospital on September 3, 1821. During the mid-to-late 19th century, Harvard Medical School was located adjacent to Massachusetts General Hospital.
Walter J. Dodd established the radiology department at the hospital. From just after the discovery of x-rays in 1895, until his early death in 1916 from metastatic cancer caused by multiple radiation cancers he oversaw the radiology department. He also underwent over 50 surgical procedures at the hospital to treat his radiation injuries, from skin grafts to amputations.
The first American hospital social workers were based in the hospital.
The hospital's work with developing specialized computer software systems for medical use in the 1960s led to the development of the MUMPS programming language, which stands for "Massachusetts General Hospital Utility Multi-Programming System", an important programming language and database system heavily used in medical applications such as patient records and billing. A major patient database system called File Manager, which was developed by the Veterans Administration, was created using this language.

Early use of anesthesia

It was in the Ether Dome of MGH in, that a local dentist, William Thomas Green Morton, was invited to perform a public demonstration of the administration of inhaled ether to produce insensibility to pain during surgery. Several years prior, Dr. Crawford Long of Danielsville, Georgia had given ether for surgery, but his work was unknown outside Georgia until he published his experience in 1849. On 16 October 1846, after administration of ether by Morton, MGH Chief of Surgery, John Collins Warren, painlessly removed a tumor from the neck of a local printer, Edward Gilbert Abbott. Upon completion of the procedure, which was without screaming or restraint, the usually skeptical Warren reportedly quipped, "Gentlemen, this is no humbug." News of this "anesthesia" invention rapidly traveled within months around the world.
A reenactment of the Ether Dome event was painted in 2000 by artists Warren and Lucia Prosperi. They used the then-MGH staff to pose as their counterparts from 1846. The Ether Dome still exists and is open to the public.
An anesthesia department was established at the MGH in 1936 under the leadership of Henry Knowles Beecher.

First successful replantation of a severed limb

On 23 May 1962, under the direction of Ronald A. Malt, a team of surgeons successfully accomplished the first replantation of completely severed limb.
While attempting to hitch a ride on the back of a freight train, Everett Knowles, aged 12 at the time, hit an abutment when the train lurched, severing his arm completely at the shoulder. He and his arm were rushed to MGH, where a 30 year old Malt conducted the team of surgeons. Some doctors prepared Everett for surgery, while others worked on the separated arm. First, they rejoined the "chaotically mangled blood vessels, then the bone and finally the skin". In the time since the accident, the arm had grown a "deathly gray", but grew steadily pink as the surgery progressed and blood vessels were reattached. The nerves would be reconnected in a later surgery.
"All we did," said the modest Dr. Malt, "was apply techniques we've known about for a long time and simply never had occasion to correlate before...The astonishing thing was not the newness of the operation but the teamwork—the way 12 doctors with expert skills, distinguished a collection of authorities as you could find anywhere, were willing to stand by and feed the incomparable extent of their knowledge to me, for no gain other than to know they had contributed."
In, MGH received a $200 million gift from Cambridge entrepreneur Phillip "Terry" Ragon to endow a permanent vaccine research center. This gift is the largest in the hospital's history and is addition to the $100 million gift he previously gave the hospital. The center is currently testing an HIV vaccine in South Africa.

Facilities and current operations

The main MGH campus is located at 55 Fruit Street in Boston, Massachusetts. It has expanded into an area formerly known as the West End, adjacent to the Charles River and Beacon Hill. The hospital handles around 1.5 million outpatient visits each year at its main campus, as well as its seven satellite facilities in Boston at Back Bay, Charlestown, Chelsea, Everett, Revere, Waltham and Danvers. With more than 25,000 employees, the hospital is the largest non-governmental employer in Boston.
The hospital has 1,011 beds and admits around 50,000 patients each year. The surgical staff performs over 34,000 operations yearly. The obstetrics service handles over 3,800 births each year. The Massachusetts General Hospital Trauma Center is the oldest and largest American College of Surgeons-verified Level One Trauma Center in New England, evaluating and treating over 2,600 trauma patients per year. Architect Hisham N. Ashkouri, working in conjunction with Hoskins Scott Taylor and Partners, provided the space designs and schematics for the pediatrics, neonatal intensive care, and in-patient related floors, as well as the third-floor surgical suites and support facilities. In the fall of 2004, the Yawkey Center for Outpatient Care opened. This ten-floor facility is the largest and most comprehensive outpatient building in New England. In 2011, the Lunder Building, a, 14-floor building opened. The building houses three floors of operating rooms, an expanded emergency room, radiation oncology suites, inpatient neurology and neurosurgery floors, and inpatient oncology floors; all of which increase the inpatient capacity by 150 beds.
In 2022, the state approved a more than $2 billion expansion proposal from MGB, which included a $1.9 billion expansion of MGH with a new clinical building on Cambridge Street. This building will house 482 inpatient beds. After utilizing many of these beds to convert other parts of the hospital from 2-bed to 1-bed rooms, the hospital will net 94 new inpatient beds. The project is expected to be fully completed in 2030.

Transportation

The closest MBTA stop to the main campus is Charles/MGH on the Red Line. On March 27, 2007, the new Charles/MGH station was opened with new renovations, including handicap accessible elevators. There are five main food service areas for the general public on the MGH campus. They include the Eat Street Cafe in the lower level of the Ellison Building, the Blossom Street Cafe in the Cox lobby, Coffee Central in the White lobby, Tea Leaves and Coffee Beans in the Wang Ambulatory Care Center, and Coffee South in the Yawkey outpatient center.

Massachusetts General Hospital for Children

Massachusetts General Hospital for Children is a pediatric acute care children's teaching hospital located in Boston, Massachusetts. The hospital has an estimated 100 pediatric beds and is affiliated the Harvard Medical School. The hospital is a member of Mass General Brigham and is the only children's hospital in the network. The hospital provides comprehensive pediatric specialties and subspecialties to patients aged 0–21 throughout Boston and the wider Massachusetts. Massachusetts General Hospital for Children also sometimes treats adults that require pediatric care. The hospital is directly attached to Massachusetts General Hospital and a Ronald McDonald House of New England family room is on site.
The hospital has an American Academy of Pediatrics verified level III neonatal intensive care unit that has a capacity of 18 bassinets. The hospital also has a 14-bed pediatric intensive care unit for critical pediatric patients age 0–21.
In 2020, amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, the hospital converted their PICU into an adult ICU to help with the surge capacity for COVID-19. Patients that were in the PICU previously were transferred out to the Floating Hospital for Children and Boston Children's Hospital for treatment.

Awards

As of 2021, Massachusetts General Hospital for Children has placed nationally in 5 ranked pediatric specialties on U.S. News & World Report.
SpecialtyRank Score
Neonatology#4279.1
Pediatric Diabetes & Endocrinology#2870.7
Pediatric Gastroenterology & GI Surgery#2579.6
Pediatric Pulmonology & Lung Surgery#2377.6
Pediatric Urology#4751.1