Tufts Children's Hospital (formerly Floating Hospital for Children) in Boston, Massachusetts was a downtown Boston pediatric hospital owned by

Tufts Medical Center Tufts Medical Center (until 2008 Tufts-New England Medical Center) in Boston, Massachusetts is a downtown Boston hospital midway between Chinatown and the Boston Theater District. The hospital is a community based medical center for biomedical r ...

, occupying the space between

Chinatown A Chinatown () is an ethnic enclave of Chinese people located outside Greater China, most often in an urban setting. Areas known as "Chinatown" exist throughout the world, including Europe, North America, South America, Asia, Africa and Austra ...

and the

Boston Theater District The Boston Theater District is the center of Boston's theater scene. Many of its theaters are on Washington Street, Tremont Street, Boylston Street, and Huntington Avenue. History Plays were banned in Boston by the Puritans until 1792. Bosto ...

, which closed in summer 2022. In January 2022, Tufts announced they would be closing their 41-bed pediatric hospital later in 2022 but will keep their

NICU A neonatal intensive care unit (NICU), also known as an intensive care nursery (ICN), is an intensive care unit (ICU) specializing in the care of ill or premature newborn infants. Neonatal refers to the first 28 days of life. Neonatal care, as kn ...

open. It closed in June 2022. The 41-bed children's hospital offered pediatric inpatient and outpatient services in every medical and surgical specialty. Tufts Children's Hospital was also the principal pediatric

teaching hospital A teaching hospital is a hospital or medical centre that provides medical education and training to future and current health professionals. Teaching hospitals are almost always affiliated with one or more universities and are often co-located ...

for

Tufts University School of Medicine The Tufts University School of Medicine is the medical school of Tufts University, a Private university, private research university in Massachusetts. It was established in 1893 and is located on the university's health sciences campus in downto ...

, where all full-time physicians held faculty appointments. Tufts Children's Hospital was a member o
Tufts Medicine
and has affiliations with hospitals in the community, including

Lawrence General Hospital Lawrence General Hospital is private non-profit hospital with 189 beds in Lawrence, Massachusetts. It is affiliated with Tufts Children's Hospital and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, a Harvard Medical School teaching hospital. Facilities ...

Lowell General Hospital Founded in 1891, Lowell General Hospital is an independent, not-for-profit community hospital serving the Greater Lowell area and surrounding communities. With two primary campuses located in Lowell, Massachusetts, Lowell General Hospital offers ...

MetroWest Medical Center MetroWest Medical Center is a teaching hospital in Framingham and Natick, Massachusetts. It is the largest health care provider in the MetroWest region between Boston and Worcester. MWMC was formed by the 1992 merger of two hospitals in neighbo ...

Signature Healthcare Brockton Hospital Signature Healthcare Brockton Hospital is a 216-bed hospital located in Brockton, Massachusetts. Brockton Hospital is equipped with the Helen Greene Cardiac Catheterization Suite. The cardiac suite is equipped to perform Intravascular Ultrasound ...

and

Cape Cod Hospital Cape Cod Hospital is a not-for-profit regional medical center located in Hyannis, Massachusetts. Founded in 1920, as of 2011 it is the largest hospital on Cape Cod. The administration is headed by CEO Michael K. Lauf. The hospital has 283 bed ...

. Tufts Children's Hospital had Specialty Centers in Woburn,

Chelmsford Chelmsford () is a city in the City of Chelmsford district in the county of Essex, England. It is the county town of Essex and one of three cities in the county, along with Southend-on-Sea and Colchester. It is located north-east of London a ...

, Westford and

Lawrence Lawrence may refer to: Education Colleges and universities * Lawrence Technological University, a university in Southfield, Michigan, United States * Lawrence University, a liberal arts university in Appleton, Wisconsin, United States Preparator ...

provided sub-specialist care for children on an outpatient basis. Along with th
New England Quality Care Alliance
(NEQCA), a 1,600-physician network, who provide care to patients throughout eastern Massachusetts. NEQCA's primary care physicians care for more than 550,000 patients. Some ambulatory sub-specialty centers remained open after the main hospital’s closure.

History

Floating Hospital for Children began as a hospital ship sailing the

Boston Harbor Boston Harbor is a natural harbor and estuary of Massachusetts Bay, and is located adjacent to the city of Boston, Massachusetts. It is home to the Port of Boston, a major shipping facility in the northeastern United States. History Since ...

for the first time in 1894. The hospital was founded by

Rufus Tobey Rev. Rufus B. Tobey (1849–1920) was a Congregationalist pastor who founded the Floating Hospital for Children in Boston, which was later renamed Tufts Children's Hospital at Tufts Medical Center. Rufus Babcock Tobey was born in New Bedford, M ...

, a Congregationalist minister. For a time, the boat was also used for parties on Boston harbor, with the leisure cruise ending at midnight and hospital services opening at 8am.Chakrabarti, Meghna, Brooks, Anthony, & Kulig, John. (1 October 2014)
12 Things You Didn’t Know About The History Of Boston’s Floating Hospital For Children
''Radio Boston'', WBUR. Archived (Text and Audio) in th
Wayback Machine
on 18 April 2017. Retrieved 20 June 2022. Heralded as a major innovation in pediatric medicine, the mission of the hospital ship was to take ill urban children out onto the harbor to experience the healing qualities of fresh sea air and sunshine. By the end of the first summer, 1,100 children were treated. For 33 years, Floating Hospital for Children was located on two successive vessels helping children and educating mothers about dysentery and other important health issues. Furthermore, two major advancements made on board were the development of a human milk bank to supply breast milk to sick infants, and the creation of the first effective synthetic milk product for infants (

infant formula Infant formula, baby formula, or simply formula (American English); or baby milk, infant milk or first milk (British English), is a manufactured food designed and marketed for feeding to babies and infants under 12 months of age, usually prepar ...

), still sold worldwide today as

Similac Similac (for "similar to lactation") is a brand of infant formula that was developed by Alfred Bosworth of Tufts University and marketed by Abbott Laboratories. It was first released in the late 1920s, and then reformulated and concentrated in 195 ...

. The Floating Hospital claims to be the first with air conditioning in 1906, though the

Royal Victoria Hospital, Belfast The Royal Victoria Hospital commonly known as "the Royal", the "RVH" or "the Royal Belfast", is a hospital in Belfast, Northern Ireland. It is managed by the Belfast Health and Social Care Trust. The hospital has a Regional Virus Centre, which ...

claims to be the world's first air-conditioned public building. In 1927 the Floating Hospital ship was destroyed by fire, and an on-shore facility was created for research and some clinical specialties. It also began an affiliation with

and Tufts Medical Center's predecessor, the

Boston Dispensary The Boston Dispensary (est.1796) or Boston Medical Dispensary provided for "medical relief of the poor" in Boston, Massachusetts, from the late 18th century through the mid-20th century. It was one of the first hospitals in the United States. In t ...

. Floating Hospital for Children officially merged with

in 1965, but retained its name until it became Tufts Children's Hospital in 2020. In January 2022, Tufts announced they would be closing their 41-bed pediatric hospital as of July 2022 but will keep their

open. This closure will allow the hospital to expand the treatment of adult patients. Tufts will now refer pediatric patients to Boston Children’s Hospital.

Emergency Medicine

Tufts Children's Hospital is home to the Kiwanis Pediatric Trauma Institute (the oldest pediatric trauma center in the country) and is a Level I Pediatric Trauma Center.

Transportation

The Tufts Medical Center MBTA Station is on the

MBTA Orange Line The Orange Line is a rapid transit line operated by the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) as part of the MBTA subway system. The line runs south on the surface from Oak Grove station in Malden, Massachusetts through Malden and Me ...

and there is a connecting Silver Line stop beneath the overpass connecting the main atrium with Tufts Children's Hospital. Also within a short walking distance is

South Station South Station, officially The Governor Michael S. Dukakis Transportation Center at South Station, is the largest railroad station and intercity bus terminal in Greater Boston and New England's second-largest transportation center after Logan In ...

, a major transportation hub serving the

MBTA Commuter Rail The MBTA Commuter Rail system serves as the commuter rail arm of the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority's transportation coverage of Greater Boston in the United States. Trains run over of track to 141 different stations, with 58 statio ...

MBTA Red Line The Red Line is a rapid transit line operated by the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) as part of the MBTA subway system. The line runs south and east underground from Alewife station in North Cambridge through Somerville and Camb ...

Greyhound Lines Greyhound Lines, Inc. (commonly known as simply Greyhound) operates the largest intercity bus service in North America, including Greyhound Mexico. It also operates charter bus services, Amtrak Thruway services, commuter bus services, and pac ...

Amtrak The National Railroad Passenger Corporation, Trade name, doing business as Amtrak () , is the national Passenger train, passenger railroad company of the United States. It operates inter-city rail service in 46 of the 48 contiguous United Stat ...

, and several

buses with links to

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

References

External links

Tufts Children's Hospital Official Website

Tufts renames Floating Hospital for Children, sparking mixed reactions
{{authority control Children's hospitals in the United States Hospitals in Boston Teaching hospitals in Massachusetts Pediatric trauma centers

History

Emergency Medicine

Transportation

References

Further reading

External links