1968 – The Johns Hopkins Hospital and Connecticut General Life insurance Company team up to create one of the first health maintenance organizations.

1970 – The groundbreaking for the new Columbia Medical Center takes place.

1971 – Columbia Hospital & Clinics Foundation is formed.

1973

July 9 – The Columbia Hospital and Clinics Foundation, Inc., opens its doors as a 59-bed, short-stay hospital.

July 17 – Columbia Hospital and Clinics Foundation is fully operational. The hospital has 75,000 square feet, including: emergency facilities, a three-bed coronary unit, a ten-bassinet nursery, operating rooms and delivery suites, and 59 general patient beds. The hospital initially serves anyone in need of emergency care, patients of Howard County physicians with staff appointments to the hospital and members of the Columbia Medical Plan.

September 13 – The Columbia Hospital and Clinics Foundation is officially dedicated.

1974 – Columbia Hospital and Clinics Foundation changes ownership and control.

Columbia Hospital and Clinics Foundation becomes independent of Johns Hopkins and changes its name to Howard County General Hospital, a private, nonprofit hospital governed by a board of trustees representing the community it serves. Patients with all types of insurance can be admitted.

1975 – The hospital applies to the Maryland Comprehensive Health Planning Agency asking to construct a 120-bed addition. in 1976.

1976 - The Howard County General Hospital Capital Fund, Inc., the predecessor of the Howard Hospital Foundation, is established and raises $1.7 million of the $8.8 million needed, and construction begins for the hospital addition.

1977 - Work begins on a two-story, multispecialty medical office building on hospital property, known as the Medical Arts Building.

1978 - HCGH opens a 56-bed satellite acute care facility at Lorien Nursing home to serve as an interim expansion to ensure hospital capacity meets community needs.

1980 - The North Wing expansion opens adding 120 beds. The expansion includes improved Labor and Delivery rooms, a pharmacy, dietary services as well as more beds to the Critical Care Unit and a 21-bed step-down Intermediate Care Unit. The newborn nursery is expanded and the entire third floor of the hospital is dedicated to the treatment of maternity and gynecology patients.

1981- An eight-bed pediatric cluster opens on the second floor of the new North Wing.

1986 - Construction begins on the second building expansion to include an outpatient testing center.

1987 - Howard Health System is created as a parent company to HCGH to plan and coordinate hospital and health services for Howard County residents.

1988 – The ribbon cutting for new South Wing takes place. The $28 million construction and renovation project provides 72 new medical/surgical beds, a new main entrance and a cafeteria.

1989 - The Cardiac Rehabilitation Program begins, led by David S. Jackson, M.D., a cardiologist with Maryland Primary Care Physicians.

1990 - Victor A. Broccolino becomes president and CEO of HCGH.

A six-bed Special Care Nursery opens to provide care to high-risk infants by full-time neonatologists.

1992 - The Capital Fund is renamed the Howard Hospital Foundation to better reflect the breadth of its fundraising mandate.

A 6,500 square foot addition is built to accommodate the Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) Center.

1993- The First Annual Symphony of Lights is held in Columbia.

1994 - HCGH initiates one of the most advanced, freestanding regional oncology centers on the East Coast at the Central Maryland Oncology Center. The center is a joint initiative between HCGH and the University of Maryland Medical Center.

1996 - The Ambulatory Care Center opens housing a multispecialty outpatient surgical facility.

The Central Maryland Heart Center opens. The county's first cardiac catheterization laboratory is a joint venture between Johns Hopkins Medicine and HCGH.

HCGH, through a contract with the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, initiates a maternal fetal medicine service at the hospital to care for women at high-risk during their pregnancies. Johns Hopkins physicians provide consultation services to local obstetricians and manage the Center for Maternal Fetal Medicine.

1997 - A comprehensive pediatric unit opens, staffed by Johns Hopkins pediatric specialists, who provide emergency, observation and inpatient services.

The 13-bed Chest Pain Unit (now called the Observation Unit) is opened on the first floor of the hospital.

The 4 South nursing unit opens to serve oncology patients.

1998 - After a two-year planning period, the Board of Trustees votes to enter a strategic partnership to become a member of Johns Hopkins Medicine and the first community hospital in the Johns Hopkins Health System. The Horizon Foundation is formed through the merger and capitalized with a $66 million gift from HCGH.

The new Maternal Child Unit opens, featuring nearly all private rooms for new parents.

The Claudia Mayer Cancer Resource and Image Center opens, providing free information and support for cancer patients, their families and caregivers.

1999 - The Special Care Nursery is upgraded to a Level III Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) and staffed by Johns Hopkins neonatologists.

2000 - The Howard Hospital Foundation launches its Master Facility Campaign, a four-year capital campaign to help fund the $34 million project to construct a new Emergency Department, Intensive Care Unit and obstetrics facilities.

2001 - A new 16-bed Intensive Care Unit (ICU) opens as part of the hospital’s expansion and renovation.

The Johns Hopkins Wilmer Eye Institute, an internationally-renowned eye institution, opens a practice on the campus of HCGH.

2002 - A state-of-the- art Emergency Department opens, triple in size of the former Emergency Department, with services provided by Johns Hopkins Emergency Medicine physicians.

HCGH purchases a 10-acres of land in anticipation of a growing demand for health care services in the county - increasing the campus size by 50 percent. Seven years later, the Medical Pavilion at Howard County opens on the land.

The new Labor and Delivery and Neonatal Intensive Care Units (NICU) open adjacent to the Maternal Child (Postpartum) unit providing contiguous maternal child facilities in the West Wing of the hospital.

2003 - The Center for Wound Healing opens to treat patients with non-healing and chronic wounds.

Intensivist medicine is introduced in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU), providing round-the-clock coverage by intensivist physicians.

HCGH was granted approval by the Maryland Health Care Commission to provide this primary percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) in the hospital. This life-saving procedure, which opens clogged arteries, helps patients experiencing certain types of heart attacks called STEMIs.

2005 - HCGH adds cardiac electrophysiology treatment with the addition of Johns Hopkins arrhythmia specialty physicians—cardiologists with added expertise in abnormal heart rhythms— to the staff.

2006 - The Center for Maternal Fetal Medicine is staffed and managed by Johns Hopkins specialists, providing a team approach to perinatal care and management of high-risk pregnancies.

2007 - The Campus Development Plan begins, a multiyear project to provide the hospital with a brand new five-level Patient Pavilion that houses inpatient floors with all private rooms and offers new outpatient space.  

The Behavioral Health Unit opens in the Emergency Department, providing a separate, secure and comfortable treatment space for patients presenting with mental health conditions.

2008 - HCGH becomes a state-certified primary stroke center.

2009 - The Medical Pavilion at Howard County opens – a five-level, 167,000 sq. ft. building housing medical practices, the Johns Hopkins Laboratory, Johns Hopkins Outpatient Pharmacy, Claudia Mayer Cancer Resource Center, Central Maryland Radiation Oncology and HCGH Wellness Center.

The new five-story Patient Pavilion opens with all private rooms and includes the new The Bolduc Family Outpatient Center.

2012 – The Breast Center at HCGH opens, under the leadership of Lisa K. Jacobs, M.D., a Johns Hopkins surgical oncologist.

2013 – The Johns Hopkins Center for Sleep opens at HCGH directed by Johns Hopkins sleep specialists Charlene Gamaldo, M.D., and Rachael Salas, M.D.

2014 –Vic Broccolino, longest-serving president and CEO of HCGH, retires.

Steve Snelgrove becomes HCGH president.

The Health Care and Surgery Center building is renamed the Dr. Sanford A. Berman Dr. Kay Ota-Berman Pavilion in recognition of their $5 million donation. This is the largest private donation in the history of both Howard County General Hospital and Howard County at large.