The Pathology Department at the Brigham and Women's Hospital provides all patient care services in pathology for the Brigham and Women's Hospital and the Dana Farber Cancer Institute (DFCI), as well as consultative services to the Children’s Hospital Boston, Faulkner Hospital, Harvard Vanguard Medical Associates (HVMA) and the Boston Medical Examiner's office. Academic collaborations with Harvard Medical School, Massachusetts General Hospital, Children’s Hospital, and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center are abundant.
Brigham and Women's Hospital
A primary teaching hospital of the adjacent Harvard Medical School, the Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH) is a 747-bed private, not-for-profit hospital with a full-time clinical and affiliate staff of 2,276 physicians. BWH is known worldwide for its high quality and innovative patient care, cutting edge translational and clinical research and training, and a collegial and collaborative culture. The hospital has been named one of the nation’s “10 Best” by U.S. News and World Report throughout the last decade. The clinical volume and breadth available to trainees at the BWH is exceptional: annually there are approximately 45,000 admissions; 55,000 emergency department evaluations; and more than 950,000 ambulatory visits. The surgical services cover a wide range of surgical specialties, including general, oncologic, cardiac, thoracic, orthopedic, neurological, genitourinary, and gynecologic surgery, as well as transplantation, including approximately 65 kidney, 20 heart, and 20 lung transplants per year. There is a separate bone marrow transplant service performing over 300 transplants per year. The medical services include internal medicine, cardiology, endocrinology, gastroenterology, rheumatology, oncology, hematology and dermatology. The gynecology and obstetrics services are extremely active, with nearly 9,000 births per year. Relationships among pathologists and clinicians are excellent, and collaborations are extensive.
BWH is located in Boston’s “Longwood Medical Area” adjacent to Harvard Medical School, the Countway Medical Library, Children’s Hospital, the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, and the Harvard Schools of Dental Medicine and Public Health. BWH is within easy commuting distance by public transportation of downtown Boston and the neighboring communities of Brookline, Jamaica Plain, Brighton and Cambridge; it is a short driving distance from most Boston suburbs. The patient population is derived from several sources, including a local inner city neighborhood, a suburban population, HMOs that serve a large, diverse primary care population, and an extensive tertiary care referral service.
BWH currently sponsors 44 ACGME-accredited specialty and sub-specialty programs with 805 residents. The hospital supports an extensive research program which includes over 1000 primary investigators and 800 research fellows with total research expenditures topping $370 million (64% attributed to NIH grants). The BWH Biomedical Research Institute (BRI) is the umbrella organization for all research efforts at the hospital. The BRI offers a new paradigm for research at BWH which groups research into thematic centers, and technology-based platforms and cross-cutting programs to enhance collaboration among disciplines and dissolve barriers that inhibit such collaboration.
Since 1993, the Brigham and Women's Hospital and the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) have collaborated (the Partners HealthCare System) in an integrated health care network (the Partners Community HealthCare System [PCHI]) and various initiatives to strengthen the research and teaching missions of these hospitals. Now mature and thriving, this close affiliation has enhanced patient services and clinical programs, research and training, and administrative and support services. This arrangement is not a hospital merger. Although the Departments of Pathology at BWH and MGH have many shared projects and collaborative programs, they remain distinct and independent. The training programs in Pathology at the BWH and MGH separately recruit and select residents, design curricula, administer rotations, and provide mentoring. Nevertheless, a byproduct of the BWH-MGH affiliation is the creation of enhanced opportunities for broadened residency and fellowship training, especially interstitutional subspecialty elective rotations.
Dana Farber Cancer Institute
The Department of Pathology at BWH provides virtually all of the patient care services at DFCI. The Dana Farber Cancer Institute (DFCI) is an internationally‑known comprehensive cancer center with 1,036 admissions and 208,745 outpatient visits a year, and an active bone marrow transplant program for both hematopoietic and solid organ malignancies. It has historically provided a wide variety and large number of carcinomas, sarcomas, and hematopoietic malignancies for diagnostic evaluation and review by BWH pathologists, and a large fraction of the autopsies done by the BWH Autopsy Service.
In 1996, a unified adult medical oncology program combining the patient care and clinical research strengths of DFCI, Brigham and Women's Hospital and the Massachusetts General Hospital was formed (Dana-Farber/Partners Cancer Care). As a major feature of this joint venture, all 57 DFCI inpatient beds were moved into the Brigham and Women's Hospital in 1997. The BWH Department of Pathology continues to perform the diagnostic pathology and clinical laboratory services for these inpatients as well as DFCI ambulatory patients, including a large volume of consultation specimens. Moreover, most clinical laboratories of the DFCI have merged with those of the Brigham and Women's Hospital.
Children's Hospital Boston
Children's Hospital Boston (CHB), one of the largest pediatric medical centes in the US is an international referral center and primary health care facility with 377 inpatient beds, approximately 17,000 admissions, 450,000 outpatient visits, 22,000 surgeries, 9,000 surgical specimens, and 86 autopsies annually. There is a large oncology and hematology service, as well as an active transplant program, including bone marrow, liver and heart. BWH Pathology residents and subspecialty fellows see relevant pediatric pathology at CHB.
Faulkner Hospital
Faulkner Hospital is a 150-bed community hospital located in the Jamaica Plain section of Boston, which is affiliated with Brigham and Women’s Hospital. It offers complete medical, surgical, and psychiatric care, as well as a full complement of emergency, ambulatory, and diagnostic services making it a dynamic leader in providing community-responsive health care. A particular strength of Faulkner Hospital is the Faulkner Breast Center, which provides a strong resource for collaborative pathology teaching and research programs. Advanced rotations emphasizing a community-based approach to the practice of pathology are available at Faulkner Hospital.
Harvard Vanguard
As New England's first and largest health maintenance organization, Harvard Vanguard cares for over half a million patients in over 23 centers. With a large number of its inpatients admitted to BWH, Harvard Vanguard provides a considerable number of pathological specimens that are examined by the Pathology Department at the Brigham.
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