As I am a patient under the Royal Free Hospital and have now visited the place several times I thought it would be a good idea to look into it’s history. This was also prompted by the fact that walking to a concert one evening along the Gray’s Inn Road, I noticed a building with words ‘Royal Free Hospital’ on the tympanum of an imposing building. As the hospital I know as the ‘Royal Free’ is located in Pond Street, Hampstead I was intrigued.
It turns out that the Royal Free was originally founded in 1828 in Gray’s Inn Road, so I had walked past the original building. The hospital moved into the current (architecturally dismal) building in the 1970s. The accolade ‘Royal’ is due to a royal charter granted by Queen Victoria in 1837 in recognition of the work of the hospital during a cholera epidemic in London. It was described as the ‘free’, not surprisingly, because it offered its services for free to all in London that needed its help.
The current hospital is a large building with over 900 beds. The hospital website lists its specialist services as:
“liver, kidney and bone marrow transplantation, renal, AIDS/HIV, infectious diseases, plastic surgery, immunology, paediatric gastroenterology, ENT surgery and audiological medicine, amyloidosis and scleroderma. We are a leading cancer centre with a range of specialist diagnostic and treatment services in oncology and haematology and a major neuroscience base with a network extending throughout north London and into the Home Counties.”
Pretty impressive! - and it appears that the Royal Free was the first hospital in the UK that appointed a consultant specifically for HIV back in 1989. The Royal Free Hampstead NHS Trust was given an ‘excellent’ rating for ‘Quality of services’ and an ‘excellent’ rating for ‘Use of resources’ in a recent (2008) assessment report from the “Care Quality Commission” (link here)
It is certainly nice to know that I am receiving the best possible care!
