[1] The hospital provides a full range of diagnostic and therapeutic services to patients, with particular expertise in cardiology, including the state's only open heart surgery program; diabetes, emergency medical and trauma, neurosciences, oncology/radiation oncology, orthopedics, pediatrics, and surgery.

Recording nearly 154,000 visits in the fiscal year of 2016, Rhode Island Hospital's adult and pediatric emergency wings are among the busiest in the United States.

[2] Many of its physicians are recognized as leaders in their respective fields of cancer, cardiology, diabetes, orthopedics, trauma, and minimally invasive surgery.

Board certification or eligibility in a specialty or subspecialty is required for all appointed members of the medical staff, as well as those with limited clinical privileges.

[1] The original Main Hospital Building was built in the 1860s, and the Southwest Pavilion was designed in Victorian style by architects Stone, Carpenter and Willson in 1898 and opened in 1900.

[6] The Southwest Pavilion, the last remaining building of the hospital's original 19th-century Victorian campus, was demolished in 2015 over the objection of local preservationists.

Alan and Stephen Hassenfeld, the owners of Hasbro, helped start a campaign to raise money for the new hospital.