1958 - 1982

“The Beginning of a New Era
in Medical History”

In February and early March 1958 , more than 11,000 members of the public, media and the District of Columbia Medical Society toured the not-yet-open Washington Hospital Center. On March 1 and 2—during the open house for the general public—people waited for up to two hours in frigid weather to get a first-hand look at the brand-new complex.

1958
• Student nurses from Washington Hospital Center School of Nursing make up the 800 beds of the new hospital in time for opening day. The nursing school opened its doors in the fall of 1957, six months before the Hospital Center began operations.

• On March 10, the brand new and thoroughly modern Washington Hospital Center opens its doors to widespread praise. A local newspaper's banner headline trumpets: “ The Washington Star Welcomes the Beginning of a New Era in the Medical History of Washington.” The Hospital Center is one of the first completely air-conditioned hospitals in the United States, as well as one of the earliest to install computerized accounting systems. Other novelties include the area's first tissue bank and eye bank; intercoms linking rooms to nurses' stations; beds that can be raised and lowered with the touch of a button; and a pneumatic tube system for hospital-wide communication. The Hospital Center also offers the most up-to-date X-ray facilities and largest private psychiatric service in the nation's capital. Cost: $23,710,000. When the outpatient clinic opens at 9 a.m., more than a dozen people are waiting to be treated. By the end of the day, 36 patients are admitted.

• At 2:40 p.m. on March 10, the first baby is born at Washington Hospital Center to a young Army couple. The 24-year-old mother of the 7-pound, 3-ounce newborn is officially recognized as the Hospital Center's first patient.

• Warwick T. Brown, MD, serves as the first president of Washington Hospital Center until March 1959. (His official title was administrator.) Formerly the head of Emergency Hospital, Brown helped to shepherd the Hospital Center from the drawing board to reality.

• In April, the existing women's volunteer groups from the three founding hospitals meet for the first time to launch the Women's Division of the Hospital Center. Mrs. C. Ashmead Fuller (Garfield Hospital) is named the division's first president.

• By June 1, 584 of the Hospital Center's 773 beds are staffed. The Emergency Department is handling 3,000 patients monthly. Outpatients for the first six months number 33,500.

• On June 14, Episcopal transfers the last four of its remaining patients to the new Hospital Center; all three founding hospitals are now officially out of business.

• In June, Washington Hospital Center's first “Gold-headed Cane Award” is presented at the first staff dinner to four doctors of the new facility. The tradition originated at Garfield Hospital in 1951, based on a 17 th century custom in London.

• The Hospital Center's Stork Club sponsors the city's first parenthood preparation classes.

• The Needy Sick Fund is created to help “thrifty, responsible and independent” patients pay their medical bills. To this day, the Needy Sick concept is built on a unique three-way partnership involving the Fund, the hospital and the physician. When the Fund agrees to cover a patient's bill, the physician waives any fee not covered by insurance and the Hospital Center waives any balance not covered by the Fund. Thousands of patients from the Washington community have received assistance from the Needy Sick Fund during the past 50 years.

• The Hospital Center employs 546 full-time employees its first year, most of whom were earlier employed by the three founding hospitals.
  1959
• In March, Warwick T. Brown, MD, retires as head of Washington Hospital Center. Deputy administrator Richard M. Loughery is named his successor. Loughery serves until 1981.

• In August, the first wedding ceremony is held in Washington Hospital Center's chapel. An intern from Germany marries a Red Cross volunteer. In a remarkable feat of engineering, the chapel was moved intact from Episcopal during construction of the Hospital Center.
  

• The Ophthalmology Department establishes the first ocular pathology lab under the direction of Benjamin Rones, MD, and Lorenz Zimmerman, MD, founder of the specialty.
  1960
• On March 1, Washington Hospital Center receives the deed and title to its site from the federal government. In exchange, Garfield, Emergency and Episcopal Hospitals give up the deeds to their old sites, formally ending ties between the federal government and the Hospital Center. The Hospital Center will sustain itself for the next 50 years as a private, not-for-profit hospital—the largest in the Washington metropolitan area.

• The Hospital Center launches a two-year program to train X-ray technologists.

• In February, the Hospital Center is named Modern Hospital of the Month by Modern Hospital Magazine .
  1961
• Washington Hospital Center hires Thomas Mattingly, MD, as the first full-time chairman of the Department of Medicine.
  

• The Ophthalmology Department establishes the city's first retina clinic under the direction of Harry McAllister, MD.
  1962
• The American Hospital Association ranks Washington Hospital Center as the 10th busiest hospital in the United States.

• The Women's Auxiliary hosts its first Race for Life fundraiser and dinner party at Laurel Racetrack in Maryland. The annual event is later moved to Rosecroft Raceway. Proceeds support the special interests of each founding hospital, a tradition that continues to this day.

• A few practical nurses at Washington Hospital Center receive 100 hours of extra training to prepare them to be surgical technicians. When the Hospital Center's first Intensive Care Unit (ICU) opens the following year, the nurses are well-equipped to supply vital support to the new unit.
  1963
• Hospital Center physicians become the first in the area to use direct current defibrillators to correct abnormal heart rhythms.

• Washington Hospital Center Research Foundation (later to become Medlantic Research Institute and then MedStar Research Institute) is established in the new George Hyman Memorial Research Building. Financing is provided by Hyman's widow Sadie. Her husband was an early patient of the Hospital Center. Mrs. Hyman becomes the first woman appointed to the Hospital Center's board of trustees.

• Washington Hospital Center's first Intensive Care Unit (ICU) opens . The ICU concept concentrates patients with similar critical conditions in areas staffed and equipped to handle their specific needs.

• Three seriously injured patients are transported by police helicopter to Washington Hospital Center. This is the first time patients arrive at the Hospital Center by air for medical treatment. Twenty years later, the Hospital Center will launch MedSTAR Transport, its own helicopter service for ferrying critically-ill or injured patients by air.

• Washington Hospital Center appoints Ernest Gould, MD, the first full-time chairman of the Department of Surgery.
  
  1964
• One of the Hospital Center's new ICUs becomes the area's first coronary care unit. The u nit includes six beds for coronary patients and $15,000 worth of coronary equipment provided by the Episcopal Guild of the Women's Auxiliary. Within a year, the Hospital Center treats 500 coronary patients, achieving a low 12 percent mortality rate, compared to 40 percent nationally.

• In keeping with its teaching mission, the Hospital Center establishes a clinical teaching program for undergraduate medical students.

• The Hospital Center's Pulmonary Function Laboratory is created. James Bacos, MD, chief of Cardiology from 1964 to 1981, heads the new lab.

• An editorial in the April 1964 issue of CenterLine notes that the old fear of polio has been replaced with a new fear: cancer. Cancer killed 280,000 Americans in 1963.

• Centrex, a direct dialing system, is installed to handle the more than 8,500 daily telephone calls into Washington Hospital Center.
  1965
• Washington Hospital Center is the first hospital in the area to develop a Code Blue system for rapidly responding to heart attack patients. By year's end, the Hospital Center will have three specially designed ICUs, the first and most comprehensive ICU system in the nation's capital.
  

• The new Veterans Administration Medical Center opens on the Hospital Center's campus.

• On July 30, President Lyndon B. Johnson signs a bill to create Medicare, a national health insurance program administered by the U.S. government primarily for beneficiaries over the age of 65. At the bill-signing ceremony, Johnson enrolls past President Harry S. Truman as the first Medicare beneficiary. Medicare will help to fuel the expansion of U.S. hospitals in the 1960s, 1970s and into the early 1980s.

• Anonymous donors establish the Hospital Center's annual Ernest Alva Gould, MD, Award to recognize the surgical resident making the greatest all-around effort.

• The Women's Division, the fundraising organization founded seven years earlier, becomes the Women's Auxiliary of Washington Hospital Center.
  1966
• Jane's Pool is built on the Hospital Center campus in memory of Jane Roberts Kuester, a graduate of the Garfield School of Nursing and an employee of Washington Hospital Center, who died of a brain aneurysm at a young age.

• Nan Dunn is named director of the School of Nursing, guiding the school through the transition as nursing education around the nation moves from an apprenticeship to a profession-preparation model.

• The Hospital Center participates in the first District-wide disaster drill. Such drills help to prepare the hospital to handle large-scale emergencies, including riots, major accidents and terrorist incidents. Authorities use the Hospital Center's softball field, at the time located on the hospital campus at the corner of Michigan Ave. and First Street, NW, as a staging area for patient airlifts. The Hospital Center is soon named the official trauma center for the District of Columbia.

• The Hospital Center opens an extended-care unit at the Potomac Valley Nursing Home in Rockville, Maryland, the first of its type in the Washington metropolitan area. Daily rate: $19 for a semi-private room. According to Hospital Center publication CenterLine: “The increasing impact of the Medicare program, the advances of modern medicine and the upward spiral of hospital costs make it necessary to free the hospital's acute beds for those who need them most.”

• The Hospital Center employs 1,857 full-time and 228 part-time staff.
  1967
• The first Physicians Office Building opens on Washington Hospital Center's campus, an innovation designed to attract private practice physicians to the hospital. According to CenterLine, the “new building is an outgrowth of a new trend in medical care to put many services in one area for the convenience of doctor and patient.” Offices have individual air-conditioning controls, and the building offers underground parking and separate dining facilities for physicians. Data processing is the first department to move into the new structure.

• The Hospital Center establishes the nation's first pilot program in professional counseling for cancer patients, funded in part by a grant from the American Cancer Society.

• Washington Hospital Center's softball team, made up of members of the medical staff as well as employees from environmental services, nutrition services, nursing and many other departments, wins the City Championship.
  1968
• Washington Hospital Center marks its 10th anniversary by throwing a birthday party in the Main Lobby. Ceremonies include a brief talk by Milton A. Barlow, past president of the board of trustees, and distribution of hundreds of slices of a giant six-tier, six-foot high, 650-pound cake replica of the Hospital Center complex.

• The Hospital Center's small cardiac catheterization laboratory, previously used only to teach physiology to house staff, is expanded into a well-equipped clinical lab. By 1979, the cath lab will be the busiest in the nation's capital and the foundation for the Hospital Center's burgeoning cardiac care program.

• Washington Hospital Center and the District of Columbia Medical Society co-sponsor a symposium on the use of helicopter ambulances—an idea that will eventually blossom into the Hospital Center's renowned MedSTAR Transport.

• The Hospital Center's neonatal intensive care unit opens, the first facility in the city to handle premature babies in-house instead of transferring them to Children's National Medical Center.

• Washington Hospital Center treats more than 300 patients hurt in local riots in the wake of the April 4 assassination of The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in Memphis, Tennessee. From the Hospital Center's rooftop, staff members watch the 7 th and 14 th Street corridors of the city burn.
  1969
• The Hospital Center hires the city's first full-time Infection Control Nurse, a move that serves as a model for other area hospitals and fosters collaboration with the District's Department of Health to identify, track and reduce infections.
  1970
• Washington Hospital Center opens the area's largest and most comprehensive nuclear medicine program. Nuclear imaging techniques combine radioactive substances introduced into the body with computer technology to generate images of “hot spots” – tumors, aneurysms, blood cell disorders and thyroid and pulmonary deficiencies.
  1971
• Washington Hospital Center is the first hospital to screen blood for hepatitis.

• The Hospital Center opens the Women's Clinic, the first hospital-based center to offer women a choice. It is run under the auspices of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology.

• Nursing designs and implements an educational program for acute care technicians—individuals with nurse's aide experience trained as nurse extenders for the provision of patient care in the ICU. Many trainees later become RNs, CRNAs and MDs.
  
  1972
• Building on its earlier successes with the ICU concept, the Hospital Center opens a state-of-the-art intensive care tower. One of the largest such facilities in the country, the tower houses 74 beds and includes specialized units for medical, surgical, coronary, burn, renal, pulmonary and psychiatric patients.

• The Burn Center opens at the Hospital Center, the first in the area to provide state-of-the-art care for adult burn victims.

• In March, Washington Hospital Center surgeons perform the city's first open-heart surgery procedure. Attending physicians include Karel Absolon, MD, Nicholas P.D. Smyth, MD and Michael Serementis, MD. Assisting the team is surgical resident Jorge Garcia, MD, later a key champion of the Hospital Center's cardiac program. Nurses Maude Jennings, Pat Martinez, Ann Martin and Gloria Collins are members of this first open-heart team, which works for more than three hours on the patient, who goes into cardiac arrest twice before the making it through the procedure successfully.

• The nursing department undergoes a total reorganization, decentralizing to enhance effectiveness, communications and responsiveness. At the time, the department boasts more than 1,000 nurses.

• Washington Hospital Center researchers demonstrate prednisone therapy is effective in treating myasthenia gravis.

• The Hospital Center employs 2,500.
  1973
• The Women's Auxiliary launches the Gifts and Grants Program to support all departments of Washington Hospital Center. To date, the Auxiliary has distributed more than $12 million hospital-wide, including a $1.4 million endowment to the MedStar Research Institute.
  

• William Peterson, MD, is named first full-time chairman of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology.

• Josef Viktora, MD, and Albert Baukal are awarded the first patent earned for work conducted at the Hospital Center's Research Foundation. Their insulin radio-immunoassay machine measures levels of drugs and hormones in the blood.

• Inhalation Therapy becomes the Department of Respiratory Therapy, reflecting the growing importance and responsibilities of the department's therapists.

• The Counseling Center for Alcohol Abuse opens in downtown Washington, D.C., next to the Mayflower Hotel. The counseling program is the Hospital Center's first off-campus facility.

• This year, 22 of 189 residents at the Hospital Center are women; three of the 46 interns are female. Thirty-five years later, the ratio has changed dramatically. Out of 300 residents, 156 are women and 144 are men.

• The School of Nursing faculty issues a joint position paper endorsing a baccalaureate degree rather than a diploma program for nurses.

• The Hospital Center's continuing medical education program for physicians is the first in the area to be to be surveyed and approved by the American Medical Association through the Committee on Continuing Education of the District of Columbia Medical Society.

• The section of Dermatology is established under Thomas Nigra, MD.

• Washington Hospital Center is ranked fifth among voluntary, not-for-profit hospitals by the American Hospital Association in the number of admissions per bed, with an average of 36.58, for a total of 32,187 admissions.

• David Resnick, PhD, director of Hearing and Speech, testifies before the U.S. Senate in support of legislation that would require hearing aids to be administered under the direction of a trained medical and audiological professional.

• The hospital's first Quality Assurance Program is established, co-chaired by James Curtin, MD, chairman, Department of Medicine, and Harold Hawfield, MD, a surgeon, later director of medical affairs.
  1974
• In April, a team led by Charles Currier, MD, performs the Hospital Center's first kidney transplant. Three more transplants will take place before the end of the year.

• In October, the world's first nuclear-powered pacemaker is implanted into a patient at Washington Hospital Center by Nicholas P.D. Smyth, MD, a co-investigator of the device along with a researcher from the University of Pittsburgh. A second patient receives a similar implant the same month.

• Washington Hospital Center appoints its first full-time director of medical affairs: Harold Hawfield, MD.

• The Hospital Center installs its first helipad for air ambulance transport, a project underwritten by the Women's Auxiliary.

• The Hospital Center creates a stroke counseling program.
  1975
• Washington Hospital Center is one of the first hospitals in the country to adopt a bill of rights for patients.

• On June 10, Washington Hospital Center holds its first annual health fair at the playground of the District's Harriet Tubman Elementary School, at 11 th and Kenyon Streets, NW. Doctors find 37 cases of hypertension and seven eye problems, including cataracts. CenterLine notes that the fair was “the first time the hospital has moved beyond its walls in delivering health care to the community.” Today, the Hospital Center is a major sponsor of NBC4's annual Health and Fitness Expo held at the Washington Convention Center.

• The Hospital Center establishes a combined nephrology and transplant unit composed of six beds on 3G intensive care unit. The new facility provides complete care for patients with acute chronic kidney disease and for transplant patients.

• The Department of Gastroenterology offers an advanced diagnostic technique called ERCP – endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreatography.

• Washington Hospital Center is one of a handful of hospitals in the country chosen to test a novel treatment of psoriasis using a combination of drugs and PUVA (psoralen ultraviolet-A light). The FDA approves the treatment in 1982.

• Vitreous eye surgery debuts in the Department of Ophthalmology—a precise procedure during which an ophthalmologist cuts and removes diseased or damaged tissue from the gel-like part of the eye.
  1976
• In March, David Kraft, who was born at the Hospital Center on its opening day in 1958, is feted at a party marking his—and the hospital's—18 th birthday.

• A $400,000 EMI brain scanner is installed at the Hospital Center for shared use with neighboring Children's National Medical Center. Says CenterLine: “The EMI brain scanner is one of medicine's most advanced diagnostic tools. By combining X-ray with a mini-computer, the scanner is able to process thousands of individual X-rays into a single picture of a thin cross section of the brain.”

• Stephen Gunther, MD, becomes the first full-time chairman of the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery.

• Actress Elizabeth Taylor attends the annual Race for Life fundraiser.

• The School of Nursing affiliates with Trinity College.
  1977
• Under the direction of trauma surgeon Howard Champion, MD, the Hospital Center's new shock-trauma unit establishes a Code Yellow system. During a Code Yellow alert, an 11-member team is poised to respond instantly to a patient in surgical shock or with serious injuries—for example, burns covering 20 percent of the body, multiple injuries, gunshot or stab wounds. By the end of its first day, the Code Yellow team responds to four emergencies.

• The Hospital Center becomes the first in the area to install MECCA, a two-way communications system linking paramedics to physicians. The Hospital Center also becomes home to Mobile 25, the District of Columbia's first intensive care ambulance.

• Hospital Center orthopaedic surgeons begin performing arthroscopic surgery.

• On March 9, then-City Councilman and future Mayor Marion Barry is rushed to the Hospital Center for treatment from wounds sustained when a dozen Hanafi Muslims seize 134 hostages at the District Building in downtown Washington, D.C.

• The first set of quadruplets is born at Washington Hospital Center.

• Washington Hospital Center receives accreditation as a renal/kidney transplantation and dialysis center. Kidney transplants and kidney-pancreas transplants will become one of the Hospital Center's specialties.

• Washington Hospital Center develops its own closed-circuit television system.

• Children's National Medical Center opens adjacent to the Hospital Center.

• Acclaimed singer Pearl Bailey, a native of Washington, D.C., serves as honorary chairman of the Race for Life.

• The Office of Staff Development creates a new Nurse Leadership Program, part of a nursing advancement master plan developed by a task force of nurses from throughout the Hospital Center.

• The Hospital Center's Licensed Practical Nurse Association sponsors the first all-day educational conference, attracting more than 250 LPNs from the metropolitan region.

• Robert Laureno, MD, becomes of the first full-time chairman of the Department of Neurology.

• On the eve of its 20 th anniversary, the Hospital Center has 125 departments and more than 3,100 employees.
  1978
• Washington Hospital Center celebrates its 20th anniversary.

• The Hospital Center's cardiac program continues to expand, adding an advanced remote fluoroscopy suite and angiographic procedure room to its catheterization lab. The cardiac program at the Hospital Center ranks as the most active open-heart surgery center in the Washington metropolitan area, handling more than half of all such procedures in the national capital region.

• Approximately 60 percent of the Hospital Center's nurses go out on strike for 31 days after year-long talks fail to produce a contract. On June 26, the 250 nurses vote to return to work. Notes CenterLine: “Getting back to normal is certain to be one of the greatest challenges the hospital will ever face—especially for nursing personnel who must work together again after an emotionally charged month.”

• New birthing rooms at the Hospital Center provide patients with a more homelike atmosphere.

• The Hospital Center's pharmacy pilots a unit-dose system, packaging medications individually or bottled in single-use containers to safeguard against adverse drug interactions.

• The Hospital Center's Research Foundation adds an Immunogenetics Lab, which will investigate how genes control the body's immune system.

• The Medical Staff Bulletin is established to communicate regularly with physicians.

• Nursing develops and implements a four-level clinical career ladder for the professional advancement of nursing.
  1979
• Several years in planning, MedSTAR (Medical Shock Trauma Acute Resuscitation) opens on the first floor of the Hospital Center's Intensive Care Tower. The new $1.6 million unit includes a helipad, seven resuscitation rooms, one full-service operating room and a communications center. More than 100 government officials attend the dedication on March 1, at which District Mayor Marion Barry cuts the surgical gauze ribbon to open the new facility. On March 12, MedSTAR receives its first patients.

• Hospital Center physicians perform the 100th kidney transplant at the hospital.

• Washington Hospital Center hires its first nurse practitioner or clinical nurse associate, to take patient histories and perform physical examinations in the Department of Surgery.

• The Hospital Center begins to offer outpatient laser eye surgery for glaucoma patients.

• Nurse midwives receive approval on a trial basis to work under the supervision of private physicians at the Hospital Center.

• The Burn Center opens a skin bank to freeze living skin for use in grafting procedures. The Women's Auxiliary underwrites the equipment purchase.

• William Glew, MD, is named the first full-time chairman of the Department of Ophthalmology.

• Nursing establishes two programs to advance education: Nursing Internships for new nurses and Nursing Grand Rounds for experienced nurses interested in learning more about participating on multidisciplinary teams.

• The first hospital-wide computer system is installed.

• Arthur Schwartz, MD, director of the Glaucoma Clinic, publishes a landmark paper on the laser treatment of glaucoma.
  1980
• The Hospital Center announces closure of the School of Nursing by June 1982, following a policy decision by the American Nurses Association to encourage establishment of baccalaureate nursing programs in colleges and universities. The school's demise will be mourned by many physicians, nurses and staff.
  

• The Catholic University of America and the School of Nursing sign a formal agreement designating the Hospital Center as the primary clinical practice site for CUA's highly regarded nursing school.
  1981
• On March 30, 1981, the Hospital Center admits Officer Thomas K. Delahanty of the District's police department for surgery to remove a bullet received while protecting President Ronald Reagan from a would-be assassin. During his two-week stay, Delahanty receives visits from First Lady Nancy Reagan and Vice President George H.W. Bush.

• On December 16, the Intensive Care Tower is named for retiring administrator Richard Loughery, who served as head of Washington Hospital Center from 1959 to 1981. Loughery had worked at Garfield since 1953.

• The hospital launches an innovative Weekend Alternative program for nursing staff to help address the severe nationwide nurse shortage by providing flexible work schedules.

• The Hospital Center's first satellite pharmacy opens in the ICU Tower.

• Ernest Gould, MD, is named director of the new Oncology Department, which was previously a section of the Department of Medicine.

• The Hospital Center develops its first mission statement.

• Nurse intensivists join the staff in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU).
  
  
  1982
• John P. McDaniel becomes president of Washington Hospital Center.

• On July 1, not-for-profit Washington Hospital Center Health System (later Medlantic Healthcare Group) is jointly created by Washington Hospital Center and Capitol Hill Hospital. The decision reflects a national trend among traditional stand-alone hospitals to merge and create multi-facility systems in response to spiraling operating costs and changes in the insurance industry and Medicare reimbursement. New Washington Hospital Center President John P. McDaniel predicts: “The day of the solo, free-standing hospital is limited. In order to provide total health care despite restricted resources, we must be innovative. The smart institution will have worked out its strategies well in advance. We must be willing to embark on new ventures and multi-institutional arrangements.”

• On January 13, MedSTAR and the hospital's Emergency Department take in a total of 17 injured patients: one from the crash of Air Florida Flight 90 onto the 14 th Street Bridge and ultimately, into the Potomac River, and 16 from the unrelated derailment of a rush hour Metro train 45 minutes later.

• On February 12, cardiologist Stuart Seides, MD, performs the first angioplasty procedure at the Hospital Center—an innovative technique using a balloon-tipped catheter to relieve narrowing and obstruction of the arteries to the heart, reducing or eradicating the need for open-heart bypass surgery.

• Burn Center director Marion Jordan, MD, performs the Hospital Center's first “early excision” surgery on a patient with burns over 80 percent of his body. Removing dead and burned skin earlier than normal prevents much of the pain, scarring, disability—or death—suffered by victims of severe burns. Adoption of early excision boosts The Burn Center's success in saving the lives of patients burned over more than 40 percent of their bodies.

• On June 6, the last class of Washington Hospital Center School of Nursing graduates. During almost a century of operation, the school educated 3,500 students, many of whom stayed to work at the Hospital Center after graduation.

• The Hospital Center's Medical and Dental Staff authorizes creation of a bioethics committee, one of the first in the country. The Center for Ethics at the hospital helps everyone who is involved in a patient's health to make the most appropriate medical decisions at difficult moments, including how to honor advance directives, when to withdraw life-preserving therapies and how best to resolve conflicts between the health care values of patients and their caregivers. The Center offers an on-call consultation team to support families and service providers.

• The Hospital Center's research program becomes an independent clinical research facility with its own president and board. Mrs. Robert E. (Barrie) Collins serves as president and chairman of the board.

• John J. Lynch, MD, is named full-time director of the oncology program, succeeding the late Ernest Gould, MD. Lynch takes the lead in creating plans for a designated cancer center on the Hospital Center's campus.

• Joseph Lindsay, MD, is named chief of the section of cardiology.