Library Index :: The United States Health Care System :: Health Care Institutions - Hospitals, Types Of Hospitals, Reasons For Hospitalization, Surgical Centers And Urgent Care Centers, Long-term Care Facilities

Health Care Institutions - Hospitals

The first hospitals in the United States were established more than two hundred years ago. No records of hospitals in the early colonies exist, but almshouses, which sheltered the poor, also cared for those who were ill. The first almshouse opened in 1662 in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. In 1756 the Pennsylvania Hospital in Philadelphia became the first American institution devoted entirely to care of the sick.

Until the late 1800s, American hospitals had a bad reputation. The upper classes viewed hospitals as places for the poor who could not afford home care, and the poor saw hospitalization as a humiliating consequence of personal economic failure. People from all walks of life thought hospitals were places to go to die.

User Comments Add a comment…