Clara Maass Hospital Celebrates 150 Years Of Health Care

BELLEVILLE, NJ — When Clara Maass Medical Center in Belleville was first founded in 1869, it had a mission that’s still just as relevant today: “provide care for everyone in the community, no matter their race, color, creed or ability to pay.”

Clara Maass hospital, formerly known as Newark German Hospital, has come a long way since those early days. Recent improvements to the medical center include renovations to its Emergency Department and Intensive Care Unit, as well as added an Adult Observation Unit and Post-Anesthesia Care Unit.

• See related article: Clara Maass Hospital Adds 4 'State-of-the-Art' Operating Rooms

Other recent milestones at the hospital include:

• In 2005, Clara Maass became the first hospital in northern NJ to offer an innovative radioimmunotherapy treatment for patients with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma
• The hospital’s designation as a Primary Stroke Center in 2011 by the Joint Commission
• The adoption of video electroencephalograms, the gold standard in diagnosis of non-epileptic seizures, in 2015
• The hospital’s Psychiatric Evaluation Screening Services (ESS) designation in 2017
• The Vestibular Disorder Program that opened just this year

As it gears up to celebrate 150 years, administrators shared a video of highlights over the past century and a half (watch below).

Hospital administrators shared the following historical background about Clara Maass:

“Originally named Newark German Hospital, Clara Maass Medical Center opened in 1870 as a response to a deep need for health care in the area. Built with funds raised by the community, the hospital was created to provide care for everyone in the community– no matter their race, color, creed or ability to pay. The hospital was innovative from the start. Newark German’s physicians were the city’s first to insist on antiseptic measures in surgery and in their operating room, the first successful bowel resection in the United States was performed as well as Newark’s first cesarean section.

“The hospital boasted more than groundbreaking doctors. In 1893, a young woman by the name of Clara Maass enrolled in the Christina Trefz Training School of Nurses at Newark German Hospital. Maass graduated in 1895 and by 1898, she was named head nurse. After caring for soldiers during the Spanish American War, Maass volunteered for work in Cuba to assist in the campaign to control yellow fever. One of the 19 participants, and the only woman and American, Maass exposed to mosquitoes that were believed to carry yellow fever. Unfortunately, on August 24, 1901, Maass died of yellow fever, but her sacrifice provided an important finding for medical science’s modern-day understanding of the disease and in 1952 the hospital was renamed Clara Maass Memorial Hospital in her honor.

“Shortly after, in 1957 the hospital moved to its current location on “Nanny Goat Hill” on the Newark-Belleville border. Clara Maass flourished at its new location and maintained its pace with health developments while responding to the changing needs of the surrounding communities. In the first year at the new Belleville location, the hospital saw more than double the number of admissions, births and surgeries than it had in the last full year at its old site. In 1960, the hospital’s first pacemaker was installed, in 1973 the hospitals first total hip replacement was done. Linear accelerators were first applied at Clara Maass in 1977, computerized tomography (CT) in 1981 and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) in 1990. These technologies reinforced the hospital’s standing as a state-of-the-art facility unsurpassed in its region.”

• See related article: Clara Maass Hospital Remembers Hero Nurse Who Died For Science

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