New York Downtown Hospital is a not-for-profit, acute care, teaching hospital in New York City and is the only hospital in Lower Manhattan (meaning, in this case, south of Greenwich Village). It is part of the NewYork-Presbyterian Healthcare System.
The name and location of the hospital have gone through several changes since Elizabeth Blackwell founded the New York Dispensary for Poor Women and Children in 1853. In 1857 she opened the hospital under the name of New York Infirmary for Indigent Women and Children at a different location (7th Street), near the present day Tompkins Square Park. As the hospital required more space it was moved again the next year 1858 to Stuyvesant Square. Finally in 1981, merging with the Beekman Downtown Hospital, it relocated to its present site in Lower Manhattan under the name of New York Infirmary-Beekman Downtown Hospital.
In 1991, the hospital was renamed New York Downtown Hospital. In 1997 after three years of affiliation with NYU Medical Center the name was changed to NYU Downtown Hospital and in 2005 the affiliation with the NYU Medical Center ceased and the hospital reverted back to the name New York Downtown Hospital.
The Downtown Hospital operates 170 beds, and offers a full range of inpatient and outpatient services, as well as community outreach and education. It is also a leader in the field of emergency preparedness and disaster management. The Hospital serves the area’s diverse neighborhoods including Wall Street, Battery Park City, Chinatown, SoHo, TriBeCa, Little Italy, and the Lower East Side. It is the closest acute care facility to the Financial District, to the seat of the City government, and to some of New York’s most popular tourist attractions.
In 2005, Downtown Hospital discharged nearly 12,000 inpatients. The Hospital, an affiliate of Weill Cornell Medical College, provides approximately 100,000 outpatient visits and 6,000 surgical procedures annually. In addition, as Lower Manhattan’s only Emergency Department, Downtown Hospital treats 32,000 patients annually in its Emergency Department and provides more than 5,000 ambulance transports.
In 2006 the hospital introduced a new decontamination unit built as part of the $25 million Lehman Brothers Emergency Room. The project was begun after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, when the hospital treated about 1,500 victims. Before construction of the new facility the hospital's small decontamination unit could handle about 20 patients an hour. The new unit can treat between 500 and 1,000 patients an hour. The design is based on the decontamination unit at Shaare Zedek Medical Center in Jerusalem, Israel.