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.

[4] Dr. Charles N. Carraway founded the hospital in 1908, in a house in Pratt City, now a neighborhood in Birmingham, with the capacity to treat 16 patients.

In response the hospital board elected his son, Dr Ben Carraway, to take over the running of the Facility.

According to The Birmingham News, two factors were responsible for the institution's financial demise: the decay of the Norwood neighborhood and "decades of decisions favoring patient care over profits.

[15] Much of Carraway's history took place during segregation, which "dictat[ed] virtually every element of Birmingham race relations.

"[16] A noteworthy incident involving the then-segregated[17] hospital happened in May 1961, when the staff refused admittance to James Peck, a Freedom Rider who had been severely beaten by Klansmen after descending the Trailways bus, the second bus with Freedom Riders to leave Atlanta, Georgia; he was later treated at Jefferson Hillman Hospital.

[18][19] The segregational policy of the hospital is rendered in prose fiction also, in Anthony Grooms's 2001 novel Bombingham.

[20] By 1968, the hospital was racially integrated; a notable patient in 1968 was Robert Edward Chambliss, convicted in 1977 for the 1963 16th Street Baptist Church bombing.