250 years of America. 275 years of American healthcare.

A Fourth of July note from Inneo on the founders who carried medical bags, and the health systems still doing the work today.

On July 4, the United States turns 250 years old. America’s first hospital is even older. Pennsylvania Hospital opened in Philadelphia in 1751, a full 25 years before the Declaration of Independence. Benjamin Franklin helped start it. New York Hospital followed in 1771. So, when the founders gathered in Philadelphia in the summer of 1776, the city already had a hospital, a pharmacy, and a medical school. Care for the sick got here before the country did.

Fifty-six men signed the Declaration of Independence. Four of them were doctors.

Dr. Benjamin Rush of Pennsylvania was the most famous doctor in America. He treated wounded soldiers near the front lines and later taught about 3,000 medical students, the people who built American medicine.

Dr. Josiah Bartlett of New Hampshire was a small-town doctor and the first delegate to vote yes on independence. He later became his state’s governor.

Dr. Lyman Hall of Georgia started out as a preacher, then left the pulpit to practice medicine.

Dr. Matthew Thornton of New Hampshire treated soldiers in the field before he ever picked up the pen to sign.

Medicine was in the room when the country began. That same year, George Washington asked Congress to open hospitals for the army, and it did. Army nurses were so hard to find that Congress doubled their pay to four dollars a month. Four doctors at the signing table. Four dollars a month for the nurses. The Fourth of July. The number keeps showing up.

Building care wherever it was needed

Those four doctors shared a habit that never went away. When a community needed care, someone built it.

In 1824, a woman named Josephine Potel started the Sisters of Bon Secours in Paris, France. The sisters went into people’s homes to nurse the sick. Their work crossed the ocean and continues today through Bon Secours Mercy Health.

In 1882, the city of Tacoma got its first hospital, seven years before Washington even became a state. Fannie Paddock raised $500 to build it, then got sick and died on the trip west, so she never saw it open. Her husband finished what she started and named the hospital after her. It opened inside an old dance hall. Today it is Tacoma General, part of a health system called MultiCare.

The same story repeats across the health systems that own Inneo. Religious sisters built hospitals on the prairie and along the Gulf. Communities in California built children’s hospitals so kids could get world-class care close to home.

Why this is our story too

Six non-profit health systems own Inneo. Their shared history runs through frontier hospitals, founding sisters, and one determined woman with $500 and a cause. Our job is to keep that story going. We help health systems stay strong, so they can care for their communities through whatever comes next.

The country turns 250 this weekend. The work of caring for it started earlier and hasn’t stopped.

Learn more about how Inneo Alliance partners with non-profit health systems at inneo.health

Inneo (formerly The Innovation Institute) is owned and managed by a nationwide group of non-profit health systems. We run innovation programs for our members across clinical innovation and business services, embedding alongside their teams at no charge. Inneo identifies the partners best aligned to each system’s priorities, negotiates terms on their behalf, and reinvests the resulting vendor fees back into the program. That flywheel sustains the innovation lab without additional capital calls on members. We are your ally. We are Inneo Alliance.

Sources
• National Library of Medicine, “Physician-Patriots: Four Signers of the Declaration of Independence” — infocus.nlm.nih.gov
• University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing, “Nursing Through Time: 1700–1869” — nursing.upenn.edu/nhhc (army nurses’ pay, 1776)
• Mütter Museum, “Pennsylvania Hospital” — muttermuseum.org (first hospital, 1751)
• Wikipedia, “List of the oldest hospitals in the United States” (New York Hospital, 1771); New York Presbyterian’s history page
• MultiCare, “Our History” — multicare.org/about/history (Fannie Paddock, 1882)
• Wikipedia, “Bon Secours Sisters” (founded 1824, Paris); bonsecours.org