Greenwich Hospital (Connecticut)

Greenwich Hospital in Greenwich, Connecticut is a community hospital serving people in lower Fairfield County and in lower Westchester County New York.

In 2005, the hospital admitted 11,881 in-patients (a 7.4 increase over the previous year) and 178,021 out-patients, according to one source, although the hospital itself puts the 2005 "outpatient volume" at "404,834 visits, for a 7.4 percent increase over the previous year. The percentage of patients from New York state has grown from 15.7 percent in 1998 to nearly 40 percent in 2006. A competing hospital across the border in Port Chester, New York went out of business in 2005, which could account for a good portion of the increase in patients from New York state, although the numbers coming over the border had been increasing for years.

The hospital's emergency department handled 35,841 patient visits in 2005.

Greenwich Hospital has 32 medical sub-departments, including cardiology, oncology, orthopedics, obstetrics, occupational medicine and home care. The hospital has the Bendheim Cancer Center, the Center for Healthy Aging, and the Healthy Living Center. The 9.2-acre main campus of the hospital is on Perryridge Road.

Across the street from the hospital, on Lafayette Place, the Sherman and Gloria H. Cohen Pavilion houses the Bendheim Cancer Center, a comprehensive Breast Center, and parking for outpatients. The hospital has an Endoscopy Center at 500 W. Putnam Ave., and a Healthy Living Center and IVF services at 55 Holly Hill Lane. At 2015 West Main St. on the Stamford-Greenwich border, the hospital has a diagnostic center and a community wellness department, "Greenwich Health at Greenwich Hospital."

Greenwich Hospital, a member of the Yale New Haven Health System, is a teaching institution with an internal medicine residency and is an academic affiliate of Yale University School of Medicine. The hospital is also affiliated with Antioch College, Columbia University School of Social Work, Fairfield University School of Nursing and Graduate School of Education, Hunter College Graduate School of Social Work, Norwalk Community College, Pace University, and Westchester Community College.

The hospital is licensed as an acute care facility by the state Department of Public Health & Addiction Services.

Greenwich Hospital has 472 physicians and 1,821 employees overall. Frank A. Corvino is president of the hospital, which is a nonprofit institution (as are all hospitals in the state), governed by a volunteer board of trustees.

Visitors to the main entrance go into a two-story foyer with a fountain and piano.

History
After being chartered in 1903, the hospital began service on September 12, 1906 in the Octagon House on Milbank Avenue with four attendings, ten consulting doctors, two nursing staff and seven student nurses. At that time the hospital had 24 beds.

In 1914 Commodore Elias C. Benedict, a town resident, offered to partly finance the building of a new hospital building on Perryridge Road. The first building was felt by many to be inadequate. One of the people influential in suggesting the gift to Benedict was Luke Vincent Lockwood, Benedict's lawyer and a close friend of hospital founder Dr. Fritz Carleton Hyde. Initially, there was public resistance to the proposed building, with some saying it was too big for the community. Construction was delayed by World War I, but by October 1917 the new facility was opened, in time to be used in the serious influenza epidemic the following year.

Growing demand for hospital services meant that a new building was opened on Perry Lane on May 5, 1951. Over the years new wings were added to that building, with the last addition being the South Wing in 1965.

In 1998, the hospital affiliated itself with the Yale-New Haven Health System.

Again the hospital outgrew its building, and a campaign was started to finance a new building. Groundbreaking took place in 1997 and in 1999 the new hospital building opened.

In the fall of 2005, Greenwich Hospital completed construction on its main campus with the opening of the Thomas and Olive C. Watson Pavilion. The Leona and Harry B. Helmsley Medical Building, the hospital's main building, opened in 1999. A 10-year building program was to come to an end in September 2006 with the scheduled dedication of the Carl and Dorothy Bennett Garden at the southern end of the hospital's main campus.