Phoebe: A Community of Care
Phoebe Putney Health System is a not-for-profit network of more than 4,500 physicians, nurses, professional staff, and volunteers. We deliver compassionate, high quality healthcare to more than 500,000 residents in our 41-county region. Phoebe is dedicated to providing a better way to health and wellness for our entire community.
We are a recognized leader in specialties including cardiovascular medicine, oncology, orthopaedics, and women’s health; and we offer patients the most advanced diagnostic and therapeutic treatments available.
Phoebe also operates Phoebe Physicians, a self-governing, not-for-profit network that includes clinics and hospital-based physicians representing a wide range of medical specialties.
Our History
With the hospital’s original endowment, a simple charge: “Serve all persons of the community regardless of race or ability to pay…and make it a brick building.”
In 1910, Judge Francis Flagg Putney donated $25,000 to the Ladies Hospital Aid Society of Albany to establish a hospital to serve the citizens of Southwest Georgia.
The judge’s endowment came with three stipulations:
- That the hospital be named after his mother “Phebe” Putney.
- That the hospital serve all citizens of the community, regardless of race or ability to pay.
- That the hospital be a brick building in order to withstand the greatest threat to structures at the time – fire.
The little hospital on the plains of Southern Georgia opened its doors on August 1, 1911, beginning a tradition of healing and community service that would grow into one of America’s great not-for-profit community medical centers.
In the decades since, the hospital’s service area has grown to a population of over 500,000, and Phoebe has grown to a population with it into one of America’s most progressive community health systems.
With growth, the goal has been to bring the most advanced medical talent and technology – at a level generally found only in major population centers – to the citizens of Southwest Georgia. Some things haven’t changed. As Phoebe has grown from a single hospital to a health system, the more than 4,500 members of the “Phoebe Family” serving at all Phoebe facilities have remained dedicated to Judge Putney’s original mission of service to all.
