Mass General Hospital History and Facts

Massachusetts General Hospital, founded in 1811 on what is now Fruit Street in Boston’s West End, is the third-oldest general hospital in the United States and the oldest and largest in New England, according to the hospital. This guide to Massachusetts General Hospital history covers its milestones, its size today and its weight in the Boston economy, using state, federal and hospital data.

From the Bulfinch Building to Ether Day

MGH’s first building, designed by architect Charles Bulfinch, opened to patients in 1821 and still stands at the center of the campus. Its top floor holds the operating amphitheater now called the Ether Dome.

On Oct. 16, 1846, MGH co-founder Dr. John Collins Warren removed a small tumor from the neck of a patient named Gilbert Abbott there. Boston dentist William T. G. Morton had given Abbott ether first. MGH’s archives describe it as the first successful public demonstration of ether as an anesthetic. The date is still marked as “Ether Day.”

The Ether Dome was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1965. It sits on the fourth floor of the Bulfinch Building and is still used for teaching. It also holds an Egyptian mummy, Padihershef, and a plaster copy of the Apollo Belvedere statue that Edward Everett donated in 1845.

How big is Mass General today?

The state’s Center for Health Information and Analysis (CHIA) publishes a yearly profile of every Massachusetts hospital. Its fiscal 2024 profile of MGH lists:

1,065 staffed beds, with 93.4% occupancy
50,667 inpatient discharges and 364,145 inpatient days
118,067 emergency department visits, up from 98,624 in fiscal 2020
971,907 outpatient visits
13,859 full-time-equivalent staff
Level 1 trauma center status for both adults and children

MGH’s own fiscal 2023 fact sheet counted 32,283 employees, including about 3,500 physicians and 6,240 registered nurses. It also runs health centers in Charlestown, Chelsea, Revere and the North End, plus outpatient centers in Danvers and Waltham.

Research and Harvard Medical School

MGH is the original and largest teaching hospital of Harvard Medical School, and nearly all of its staff physicians are on the Harvard faculty, the hospital says. Its Mass General Research Institute reported $1.4 billion in annual research operations and more than 9,500 researchers in fiscal 2023, which MGH calls the largest hospital-based research program in the country.

Federal grants are a big part of that money. NIH award records compiled by GotGrant show MGH received about $637.8 million in National Institutes of Health awards in fiscal 2026, ninth nationally and first in Massachusetts. The fiscal 2026 count was preliminary as of mid-October.

Rankings

In the 2026-2027 U.S. News & World Report Best Hospitals list, MGH made the 20-hospital Honor Roll. It ranked No. 1 in Massachusetts and was nationally ranked in 13 adult specialties, including:

No. 1 in psychiatry
No. 4 in ophthalmology, with Mass Eye and Ear
No. 5 in cancer
No. 6 in cardiology and heart surgery

Brigham and Women’s Hospital, MGH’s partner in the Mass General Brigham system, is also on the Honor Roll, the system said.

What MGH means for Boston’s economy

MGH and Brigham and Women’s are the founding members of Mass General Brigham, the state’s largest private employer with more than 80,000 workers. The system’s finances are thinner than its size suggests. CHIA reported a system operating margin of 0.2% in fiscal 2024, against a total margin of 9.1% once investment income is counted. That gap is the backdrop for the system’s recent budget cuts, covered in our Oct. 22 business report on Mass General Brigham layoffs.

Labor costs are also under pressure. On Oct. 23, nurses at the system’s other flagship hospital rejected Mass General Brigham’s final contract offer. Competition for cancer patients and staff is growing as well, with Dana-Farber and Beth Israel Lahey Health building a new $1.68 billion cancer hospital in Longwood.

For more on local employers, see our Boston business and economy section.

Sources

Photo: Inside the Ether Dome at Massachusetts General Hospital, by Kenneth C. Zirkel, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).

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Massachusetts General Hospital: From the 1811 Founding and Ether Day to a Boston Giant