Best Children's Hospitals US News & World Report 2025-26
World's Best Specialized Hospitals Newsweek 2026

Boston Children’s Hospital was established as a hospital for poor urban children in 1869, and we've grown from 20 beds to our current 404 beds.

For more than 150 years, we have been delivering on our vision of advancing pediatric care with an impressive list of historical milestones, from the first successful remission of leukemia in 1947 to the first successful fetal correction of hypoplastic left heart syndrome (HLHS) in 2001.

We are New England's regional referral pediatric center and a safety net hospital for the most critically ill children and those from low-income families. We partner with the community to address the most pressing health care needs in surrounding neighborhoods. The hospital trains more pediatricians and has the largest research program of any other pediatric hospital. As a not-for-profit, all of the hospital's resources go toward supporting these goals.

Tax exempt status

Charitable not-for-profit organizations such as Boston Children's are facing increased pressure from local, state, and federal government to justify their tax-exempt status. To meet the Internal Revenue Service's (IRS) requirements to qualify as tax-exempt, the IRS looks at many factors, including the following:

  • Operation of a full-time emergency room
  • Provision of non-emergency services to Medicare and Medicaid recipients
  • Be overseen by a board that includes independent civic leaders
  • Provide medical training, education, and research programs
  • Have a formal charity care policy

Boston Children's Hospital meets all of those criteria.

Nationally, 95 percent of all major academic medical centers have not-for-profit status. Certainly, the top academic hospitals as listed by U.S. News & World Report and other sources are all not-for-profits. Their not-for-profit status allows them to focus on their missions and not on meeting the quarterly demands of stockholders.