Tufts University Health Sciences News

The New England Medical Center (NEMC) is the principal teaching hospital for the School of Medicine and School of Dental Medicine. The Medical Center's chiefs of service are joint appointees with the medical school and most serve as chairs of their respective departments at the medical school. Students take 25% of their required third year clerkships and 50% of their fourth year electives at NEMC.

Recognizing that education and research are essential components to good medical care, the New England Medical Center was established in 1930 through the alliance of the Boston Dispensary, the Boston Floating Hospital for Infants and Children, and the Trustees of Tufts College. The NEMC was established as a non-profit corporation to coordinate the administrative activities of its constituent organizations. In 1946 the Joseph H. Pratt Diagnostic Hospital, an extension of the Boston Dispensary established in 1938, joined NEMC. In 1950, when the Medical School and Dental School relocated to Harrison Avenue, the NEMC became known as the New England Medical Center Hospital.

The entity was renamed Tufts-New England Medical Center in 1968, and in 1970 the NEMC board met at the Coonamessett Inn in Falmouth, Massachusetts to outline ways the NEMC and Tufts could further coordinate operations. The resulting directives, known as the Coonamessett Statement, indicated that support services and other business functions should be made the responsibility of T-NEMC in each case where it made sense to do so. That same year Tufts President Hallowell and NEMC President Quarles signed an affiliation agreement that codified the T-NEMC as an alliance through which its constituent units would move toward a completely integrated operation. By 1976, T-NEMC controlled health care studies, medical engineering, community health and ambulatory care, employee-student health services, lab animal medicine, some research, off-site medical services, a common utility supply center, architectural services, communications, educational media, parking facilities, property ownership, and public relations. However, by the late 1970s both institutions had experienced a change in leadership, resulting in a change of priorities for each. Interest in integration waned and the cooperation forged in the early 1970s was dismantled.

After a period of tension and competition in the 1980s, Tufts and NEMC drafted a new affiliation agreement in 1991, which remains in effect as of 1999. In 2000, the center was once again named Tufts-New England Medical Center, or T-NEMC.