About Us - History

Navigate "About Us":
History | Management Team 

Yesterday and Today 

Carney Hospital had its beginnings in 1863 in South Boston when Andrew Carney gave a gift of $75,000 to Sister Ann Alexis Shorb, a member of the Daughters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul, to establish a hospital. The new 186-bed hospital, the first Catholic hospital in New England, treated 53 patients during its first year of operation. It was staffed by four physicians, two lay employees and two sisters. In 1953, it moved from South Boston to its present location in Dorchester.

1863: Carney Hospital opens as the first Catholic hospital in New England.  Among its first patients were Civil War soldiers

1877: The hospital establishes Boston’s first outpatient department, located in two adjacent houses, where a visit cost 10 cents

1892: A Carney Hospital team performs the first abdominal surgery in Boston

1891: The hospital opens the first skin clinic in Boston

1892: Carney Hospital establishes the first Catholic nursing school in New England

1920: The hospital introduces its intern training program

1950: First plastic hip operation in United States is performed by Dr. W.R. MacAusland at Carney Hospital

1953: Carney Hospital moves from South Boston to its current location in Dorchester

1973: The hospital becomes one of the first in the country to establish community health centers

1974: Carney Hospital provides the first medical emergency rooftop helistop in Massachusetts

1984: The hospital’s primary care residency program begins, heralding a new era of focus on primary care

1995: Carney Hospital is one of the first two hospitals in the United States to use the Insta-Trak image-guided navigation system for sinus surgeries

1997: The hospital becomes a member of Caritas Christi Health Care

2002: Carney Hospital constructs a new EMS base station (the first new base station in the City of Boston in six years), bringing advanced emergency care to the community

2003: The hospital unveils new state-of-the-art imaging equipment including a multi-detector CT scanner and C-arm (used for neurosurgery and vascular surgery)

2006: Carney Hospital establishes new Imaging Center which provides MRI and PT Scan services. During this year, a new state-of-the-art Cardiac Catheterization Lab was opened. We also welcomed The New England Sinai Hospital to our campus.

Today, Caritas Carney Hospital has evolved into a 159-bed facility. Our doctors provide a wide range of services, including primary care medicine, a wide range of surgical specialties and subspecialties, inpatient and outpatient psychiatry, emergency medicine, critical care, pediatrics, cardiology, neurology and ambulatory surgery.

As a community teaching hospital, Caritas Carney uniquely provides the high-tech medicine of the downtown teaching hospitals with the high-touch care of the community hospital. For more than a century, the Hospital has continued to reach out to the neighborhoods to meet the needs of people where they live.