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History
VNA Care Network & Hospice is a nonprofit home health care, palliative care, hospice, and wellness provider serving more than 200 communities in Eastern and Central Massachusetts.
VNA Care Network traces its roots to 1891, when residents of Dedham raised money to start the Dedham Society for Emergency Nursing, later known as Visiting Nurse Associates.
The Worcester Visiting Nurse Association, later the VNA of Central Massachusetts, began visiting the sick and elderly at home in 1892. VNA of Central Massachusetts also included Spencer Visiting Nurse Association, established 1908, and Leominster Visiting Nursing Association, established 1919. 
Marblehead/Swampscott VNA was formed in 1896. The agency's first nurse made 98 visits to 18 families during her first month on the job. Cambridge Visiting Nurse Association was established in 1904 to deal with public health problems like influenza, tuberculosis, and polio. Visiting Nurse Association of the North Shore opened four years later (1908) to provide nursing services to mothers and newborns in an effort to reduce infant mortality rates. VNA North Shore later included Gloucester's District Nurses, established 1914.
The parent companies of Visiting Nurse Associates, Cambridge VNA, and VNA North Shore merged in May 1995 to create VNA Care Network. By working together, these agencies enhanced their ability to respond to local health care needs while improving quality, affordability, accessibility, and scope of programs and services.
VNA Care Network grew again with the merger of the VNA of Central Massachusetts in January 2000 and the Marblehead/Swampscott VNA in August 2002. VNA Care Network & Hospice acquired UMass Memorial Home Health and Hospice in September 2012. The agency began in 1966 as the Wachusett Home Health Agency and added hospice services in 1995.
VNA Care Hospice is a pioneer in care for the terminally ill in Massachusetts. The agency includes the former Hospice of Central Massachusetts, which became the first Medicare certified hospice in the state in 1984, as well as Hospice of Cambridge and Hospice Community Services of Visiting Nurse Associates. The agency opened the Commonwealth's first hospice residence, the Elizabeth Evarts de Rham Hospice Home at Chilton Street (formerly Chilton House) in Cambridge, and opened Central Massachusetts's first inpatient hospice, the Rose Monahan Hospice Home. VNA Care Hospice also operates the Stanley R. Tippett Home in Needham.