Richmond Community Hospital had its beginnings with a dedicated physician who becamethe first African American to pass the examination by the Virginia Board of Medicine in 1893: Dr. Sarah Garland Boyd Jones. Dr. Jones would become a pioneer, founding Virginia's first Black patient care facility along with her husband Dr. Miles Jones. In 1898, the Jones's creation of a patient care facility called the Women's Central Hospital and Richmond Hospital at 406 E. Baker St. in the Jackson Ward would become the first facility in Richmond designed to serve African American patients. The hospital had 25 beds and mainly served female patients. Concurrently, the Joneses would see a need to continue medical education in the community, adding a training school for nurses to the hospital in 1901.
Success would be fleeting for Sarah Jones who, at the time of her death in 1905, was the only Black woman in the commonwealth practicing medicine. Her hospital, which changed its name to the Sarah Jones Memorial Hospital in 1912, continued operation until 1920.
A few years after the Joneses established their health care facility, a group of fifteen physicians and several laymen in 1902 organized another hospital to meet the needs in the Black community of Richmond for a decent health care facility. Richmond Community Hospital began as a physician-operated facility with very little capital and a limited capacity.

Its 16 founders included Drs. Leon Reid; I. A. Jackson, Sr.; E. S. Roane; George White; Jeremiah M. Newman; C. C. Cooke; J. H. Blackwell; Miles Jones; Albert A. Tennant; Booker L. Jordan; Zenobia G. Gilpin; Fred Brown; Nathaniel Dillard; D. W. Davis; Marcellus H. Taylor; and J. B. Hughes. Sadly, Jones did not live long to see her dream grow. By the 1920s the hospital grew to a 50-bed hospital. In 1932, the hospital moved to 1219 Overbrook Road near Virginia Union University and became known as Richmond Community Hospital. The hospital operated a 104-bed facility in Church Hill at 1500 N. 28th Street.


Despite commitment by the neighborhood and staff, the hospital could not overcome its greatest problem: cash. The struggle was in managing the problem of increasing costs without placing undue burdens on the patients. In the 1990s the hospital was appropriated by Bon Secours, securing its continuance as a hospital.