Newark Emergency Center

Until the mid 1980’s, when Christiana Care Hospital was built, Newark and the surrounding communities of over 30,000 residents had no hospital. Recognizing this void in available health care, a group of concerned citizens, including physicians, representatives of the educational and business community, and ordinary residents, banded together to establish the Newark Emergency Center.

NEC opened its doors in 1973 as the first twenty-four hour free-standing emergency medical facility in the country. It is not connected to a hospital physically or financially. It has maintained a not-for-profit status with the Internal Revenue Service since inception and in its many years of operation has never closed and continues to function twenty four hours a day, seven days a week, every day of the year.