Carraway Methodist Medical Center

Carraway Methodist Medical Center was a medical facility in Birmingham, Alabama founded as Carraway Infirmary in 1908 by Dr. Charles N. Carraway. It was moved in 1917 to Birmingham's Norwood neighborhood. Its facilities were segregated according to skin color for much of its history and, in one instance, the facility refused emergency treatment to James Peck, an injured white civil rights activist who had been savagely beaten for being a Freedom Rider. This hospital was three miles from St. Vincent's. It expanded in the 1950s and 1960s and ran into financial trouble in the 2000s, declaring bankruptcy and closing in 2008.Throughout its history Carraway Methodist Medical Center was a pace-setter. In the 1980s, the facility added the area's only Level 1 Trauma Center, 3 LifeSaver Helicopters, a hyperbaric oxygen therapy department, a wound care center, the laser center, the area's first Sleep Center, among many other groundbreaking additions. Lifesaver, the first medical helicopter service in Alabama, came about because Carraway found a lot of patients in 1978 couldn't make it to Birmingham's higher-level hospitals. So by 1981, he had Lifesaver in place along with the trauma center. The helicopter program carried 30,000 patients as part of Carraway hospital, and was one of only 5 percent of emergency flight programs in the nation that placed physicians on every flight.CN Carraway continued until the original organization was sold in bankruptcy. "When you're sick, you want the administration to be as compassionate as the nurses, the caregivers, and the doctors. So administration is not just about the bottom line dollar," Robert Carraway, grandson to CN Carraway, said.