The Pathology Department at the Brigham and Women's Hospital provides all pathology services for the Brigham and Women's Hospital and the Dana Farber Cancer Institute, as well as consultative services to the Boston Children's Hospital, Faulkner Hospital, West Roxbury Veterans' Administra- tion Hospital, Harvard Pilgrim Health Care (HPHC), and the Boston Medical Examiner's office. Academic collaborations with Harvard Medical School, Massachusetts General 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 700 bed general medical and surgical facility known worldwide for its high quality patient care and research. With over 2400 full and part-time staff and over 800 residents and clinical fellows, the hospital accommodates over 41,000 inpatient admissions and 600,000 outpatient visits annually. 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. Relationships and collaborations among pathologists and clinicians are excellent.

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 services, including approximately 65 kidney, 30 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, rheumatology, oncology, hema-tology, dermatology, cardiology, endocrinology and gastroenterology. The gynecology and obstetrics services are extremely active, with over 9,800 births per year.

The hospital supports an extensive research program, including over 500 investigators with approximately 670 funded research and training projects, and 330,000 square feet of research space, largely supported by over 240 million dollars annually in NIH and other funds.

Located in the Longwood Medical Area, the hospital is within easy com-muting distance by public transportation of downtown Boston, the neighboring communities of Brookline, Jamaica Plain, Brighton and Cambridge; it is a short driving distance from most Boston suburbs.

In late 1993, the Brigham and Women's Hospital and the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) began a collaboration to form an integrated health care network (the Partners Community Healthcare System [PCHI]), while taking steps to preserve and 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 merger. The training programs in Pathology at the BWH and MGH remain distinct and independently administered, with independent resident recruitment and selection, curriculum and rotations, leadership, and mentoring. Nevertheless, a byproduct of the BWH-MGH affiliation is the creation of enhanced opportunities for broadened residency and fellowship training, especially in sub-specialty electives.

Dana Farber Cancer Institute

The Dana Farber Cancer Institute (DFCI) is an internationally-known comprehensive cancer center with 2300 admissions and 40,000 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 hemato-poietic 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/Part-ners 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 services for these inpatients as well as DFCI ambulatory patients. Moreover, most clinical laboratories of the DFCI have merged with those of the Brigham and Women's Hospital.

Children's Hospital Medical Center

The Boston Children's Hospital Medical Center is an international referral center and primary health care facility with 325 inpatient beds, approximately 16,500 admissions, 200,000 outpatient visits, 13,000 surgeries, 8,000 surgical specimens, and 86 autopsies annually. There is a large oncology and hematology service, as well as an active transplant pro-gram, including bone marrow, liver and heart.

Faulkner Hospital

Faulkner Hospital is a 130-bed community hospital located in the Jamaica Plain section of Boston which has recently become 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.

West Roxbury Veterans Administration Hospital

The consolidated Veterans Administration Hospital in West Roxbury serves a large veteran population drawn from several New England States and has 875 inpatient beds including 105 medicine and 73 surgical beds. The West Roxbury Campus of the Boston Area Consolidated Laboratories (BACL) receives specimens from multiple Veterans Administration Medical Centers and VA clinics in the New England area. There are over 71,000 admissions, 218,000 outpatient visits and 5,695 surgical operations annually. This hospital processes over 4000 surgical specimens, over 2000 cytologic specimens and approximately 80 autopsies per year.

Harvard Pilgrim Health Care

As New England's first and largest health maintenance organization, Harvard Pilgrim Healt-h Care (HPHC) cares for over half a million patients in over 13 centers, 8 of which admit all their medical patients to BWH. With a large number of its inpa-tients admitted to BWH (approximately 6,000 in medi-cine/surgery, over 3,000 in obstetrics and 200 in neonatology per year), HPHC provides a considerable number of pathological specimens that are examined by the Pathology Depart-ment at the Brigham.