Tufts-New England Medical Center Records

The Tufts-New England Medical Center (T-NEMC) was the official partnership between Tufts University and the New England Medical Center. In 1930, the School of Medicine, the Boston Dispensary, and the Boston Floating Hospital for Infants and Children created an alliance known as the New England Medical Center. Over the next forty years the evolution of NEMC, the physical move of the Medical and Dental Schools to Chinatown, and the overall shift in health care necessitated the need for a joint venture between Tufts and NEMC, a unified organization which would provide medical care as well as support research and teaching. Now named the Tufts Medical Center, it is the primary teaching hospital for Tufts Schools of Medicine and Dental Medicine, and is located in the Chinatown neighborhood of Boston.

In 1930, the governing bodies of the Boston Dispensary (BD), the Boston Floating Hospital for Infants and Children (BFH), and the Trustees of Tufts College created the New England Medical Center (NEMC). NEMC was established as a non-profit organization to coordinate the operations of its constituent organizations. Population growth and newer approaches to providing citizens economical medical care would foster the evolution of NEMC over the next two decades. In 1938, for instance, a donation from William Bingham, 2nd built the Joseph H. Pratt Diagnostic Hospital. Over time, the Pratt Clinic expanded, and subsumed the BD. The need for additional space dictated the addition of Farnsworth Surgical Building and Ziskind Research Center. The merging of these hospital units became the third piece of NEMC, the New England Medical Center Hospital (NEMCH). NEMCH was a 452-bed non-profit hospital that addressed needs in cardiology, cancer, endocrinology, hematology, kidney disease, among others. At NEMCH, patient care was integrated with student and physician training, as well as research, further cementing the relationship between NEMC and Tufts.

A physical move of the Schools of Medicine and Dental Medicine to Harrison Avenue in Chinatown, the same neighborhood as the hospitals, provided access for students and physicians. Yet, despite these physical advancements, an organizational structure unifying these entities was still lacking. Each unit operated under its own governing body, which made decision making across the medical center cumbersome. To address this issue, an organized planning effort began for NEMC to become one fully integrated, multi-operational complex dedicated to research, teaching, and medical care.

In 1965, the University/Hospital alliance was named the Tufts-New England Medical Center. It included the three units of NEMC and Tufts University Schools of Medicine and Dental Medicine. In addition, a separate corporation was established to jointly govern the University and Hospital, known as T-NEMC, Inc., incorporated in 1968. T-NEMC, Inc. had its own board, composed of members of the Board of Trustees of Tufts, as well as members of the Board of Governors of NEMC. This collaboration would continue to grow, with professors at the School of Medicine advocating for T-NEMC to serve as the primary teaching hospitals for the School of Medicine.

By 1976, T-NEMC controlled common services, which included health care studies, medical engineering, community health and ambulatory care, employee-student health services, communications, parking facilities, property ownership, and public relations. By the late 1970s both institutions had experienced a change in leadership, and interest in collaboration dissipated.

Tufts and NEMC, once again separate after T-NEMC, Inc. was dismantled, drafted a new affiliation agreement in 1991. In 2000, the center was once again named Tufts-New England Medical Center, and in 2008 was renamed the Tufts Medical Center, reflecting the working partnership between Tufts University and the New England Medical Center hospitals.