History of The Barbara Bush Children’s Hospital

The original Children’s Hospital in Portland, Maine, was opened in 1908. Patients were received from infancy to 21 years of age with a variety of conditions and were treated by a number of physicians, including pediatricians, surgeons, orthopaedic surgeons, and others. There were several boards, and one of them survives to this day as the Visiting Board of the Children’s Hospital and is very instrumental in supporting children’s services at Maine Medical Center.

In 1951 the Children’s Hospital merged with the Maine Eye and Ear Infirmary, which had opened in 1890, and the Maine General Hospital, which had opened in 1874, to become Maine Medical Center. Today, Maine Medical Center is the largest hospital in northern New England and is engaged in developing a comprehensive system of healthcare throughout the region.

The recognition in 1998 that children’s services at Maine Medical Center were the most comprehensive in Northern New England, with the full depth and breadth of tertiary care, prompted the institution to seek formal accreditation for the children’s services as The Barbara Bush Children’s Hospital at Maine Medical Center. The accreditation coincided with the opening of a state-of-the-art inpatient unit. It is worth noting that there has been a Pediatric Residency at Maine Medical Center for over 40 years.

In the last few years, a development plan for the department has resulted in the recruitment of many excellent pediatricians in the subspecialties and in general pediatrics and expansion of both the complexity of services offered, such as stem cell transplants, as well as the reach of our care (subspecialist clinics occur as far away as Caribou).

The Barbara Bush Children’s Hospital, a children’s hospital without walls, was formed to respond to the needs of the children in the region. Throughout this period of growth, the excellence and quality of our clinical services has been matched by the reputation of our academic programs. Training programs are complemented by increasingly successful research initiatives supported by extramural funding as well, as by other resources of the Medical Center through its Research Institute.