Massachusetts General Hospital (Mass General) was established to provide care to Boston’s sick, regardless of socioeconomic status. Today, Mass General is an academic medical center which annually admits 48,000 inpatients, handles 1.5 million outpatient visits and 100,000 emergency room visits, and performs more than 42,000 surgical operations. It also operates the largest hospital-based research program in the United States and is the top recipient of hospital research funding from the National Institutes of Health. Mass General is consistently ranked among the top five hospitals in the United States by U.S. News & World Report, currently recognized as #4 out of nearly 5,000 hospitals and the only hospital to be ranked in all 16 specialties considered in the rankings.