Mount Sinai Hospital (Manhattan)

Mount Sinai Hospital
Mount Sinai Health System
Buildings of Mount Sinai seen from Central Park
Geography
Location	One Gustave L. Levy Place or 1468 Madison Avenue, East Harlem, New York City, NY 10029, United States
Coordinates	40°47′24″N 73°57′12″W / 40.790066°N 73.953249°W / 40.790066; -73.953249Coordinates: 40°47′24″N 73°57′12″W / 40.790066°N 73.953249°W / 40.790066; -73.953249
Organization
Funding	Non-profit hospital
Hospital type	University, Teaching
Affiliated university	Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai
Network	Mount Sinai Health System
Services
Beds	1,171
History
Founded	1852
Links
Website	www.mountsinai.org
Lists	Hospitals in the United States

Mount Sinai Hospital, founded in 1852, is one of the oldest and largest teaching hospitals in the United States. In 2011–2012, Mount Sinai Hospital was ranked as one of America's best hospitals by U.S. News & World Report in 12 specialties.^[1]

Located on the eastern border of Central Park, at 100th Street and Fifth Avenue, in the New York City borough of Manhattan, Mount Sinai has a number of hospital affiliates in the New York metropolitan area including Brooklyn Hospital Center, and an additional campus, the Mount Sinai Hospital of Queens.

The hospital is also affiliated with the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, which opened in September 1968.^[2] In 2013, The Mount Sinai Hospital joined with the Continuum Health Partners in the creation of The Mount Sinai Health System. The system encompasses the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and seven hospital campuses in the New York metropolitan area, as well as a large, regional ambulatory footprint.

In 2014 and 2015 two of the biggest hospitals in Manhattan that were part of the Health System were formally renamed with Mount Sinai moniker: St. Luke's Hospital was renamed Mount Sinai St. Luke's and Roosevelt Hospital was renamed Mount Sinai West.

History

The hospital, from a postcard sent in 1920

As U.S. cities grew more crowded in the mid-19th century, philanthropist Sampson Simson (1780-1857) founded a hospital to address the needs of New York's rapidly growing Jewish immigrant community. It was the second Jewish hospital in the United States. At the time of its founding in 1852, other hospitals in New York City discriminated against Jews by not hiring them and preventing them from being treated in their wards.^[3]

The Jews' Hospital in the City of New York, as it was then called, was built on 28th Street in Manhattan, between 7th & 8th Avenues, on land donated by Simson; it opened two years before Simson's death. Four years later, it would be unexpectedly filled to capacity with soldiers from the Civil War.^[4][5]

The Jews' Hospital felt the effects of the escalating Civil War in other ways, as staff doctors and board members were called into service: Dr. Israel Moses served four years as Lieutenant Colonel in the 72nd;^[6] Joseph Seligman had to resign as a member of the Board of Directors as he was increasingly called upon by President Lincoln for advice on the country's growing financial crisis.^[7][8]

The Draft Riots of 1863 again strained the resources of the new hospital, as draft inequities and a shortage of qualified men increased racial tensions in New York City. As the Jews' Hospital struggled to tend to the many wounded, outside its walls over one hundred men, women and children were killed in the riots.^[9]

More and more, the Jews' hospital was finding itself an integral part of the general community. In 1866, to reflect this new-found role, it changed its name. In 1872, the Hospital moved uptown to the east side of Lexington Avenue, between 66th and 67th Streets.

Now called The Mount Sinai Hospital, the institution forged relationships with many physicians who made contributions to medicine, including Henry N. Heineman, Frederick S. Mandelbaum, Bernard Sachs, Charles A. Elsberg, Emanuel Libman, and, most significantly, Abraham Jacobi, known as the Father of American Pediatrics and a champion of construction at the hospital's new site on Manhattan's Upper East Side in 1904.^[10]

The Hospital established a school of nursing in 1881. Created by Alma deLeon Hendricks and a small group of women, The Mount Sinai Hospital Training School for Nurses was taken over by the Hospital in 1895. In 1923 the name was changed to The Mount Sinai Hospital School of Nursing. This school closed in 1971 after graduating 4,700 nurses—all women except one man in the last class. An active alumnae association continues.

The Icahn Medical Institute at 1425 Madison Avenue was built in 1997

The early 20th century saw the population of New York City explode. That, coupled with many new discoveries at Mount Sinai (including significant advances in blood transfusions and the first endotracheal anesthesia apparatus), meant that Mount Sinai's pool of doctors and experts was in increasing demand. A $1.35 million expansion of the 1904 hospital site (equivalent to over $30 million in 2008)^[11] raced to keep pace with demand. The opening of the new buildings was delayed by the advent of World War I. Mount Sinai responded to a request from the United States Army Medical Corps with the creation of Base Hospital No.3. This unit went to France in early 1918 and treated 9,127 patients with 172 deaths: 54 surgical and 118 medical, the latter due mainly to influenza and pneumonia.

Two decades later, with tensions in Europe escalating, a committee dedicated to finding placements for doctors fleeing Nazi Germany was founded in 1933. With the help of the National Committee for the Resettlement of Foreign Physicians, Mount Sinai Hospital became a new home for a large number of émigrés. When war broke out, Mount Sinai was the first hospital to throw open its doors to Red Cross nurses' aides; the hospital trained many in its effort to reduce the nursing shortage in the States. Meanwhile, the President of the Medical Board, George Baehr, M.D. was called by President Roosevelt to serve as the nation's Chief Medical Director of the Office of Civilian Defense.^[12]

These wartime roles would be eclipsed, however, when the men and women of Mount Sinai's 3rd General Hospital set sail for Casablanca, eventually setting up a 1,000-bed hospital in war-torn Tunisia. Before moving to tend to the needs of soldiers in Italy and France, the 3rd General Hospital had treated more than 5,000 wounded soldiers.^[13]

In the decades following World War II, Mount Sinai has continued its efforts to expand its usefulness to medicine and its communities. In 1963 the Hospital created a medical school and in 1968 welcomed the first students of Mount Sinai School of Medicine, now the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. The 1980s saw a $500 million hospital expansion, including the construction of the Guggenheim Pavilion, the first medical facility designed by I.M. Pei; and the faculty have made significant contributions to gene therapy, cardiology, immunotherapy, organ transplants, cancer treatments and minimally invasive surgery.

Reputation

Praise

• Mount Sinai Medical Center was named to the U.S. News & World Report America's Best Hospitals Honor Roll, ranking 14th out of nearly 5,000 hospitals nationwide. Mount Sinai was nationally ranked in 12 of 16 specialties, including #2 in geriatrics, #7 in gastroenterology, and #10 in heart & heart surgery. Other honors included high rankings for cancer (#42), diabetes & endocrinology (#14), ear, nose & throat (#11), gynecology (#25), nephrology (#35), neurology & neurosurgery (#15), rehabilitation (#12), and urology (#29).^[14]

• New York Magazine's inaugural "Best Hospitals" list ranked Mount Sinai Medical Center as #2 for overall best hospital, #3 for emergency care, #3 for pediatrics, #4 for ENT, #3 for psychiatry, #3 for cancer, #3 for cardiac care, #1 for digestive disorders, #5 for orthopedics, #2 for OB-GYN, and #3 for neurology/neurosurgery.^[15]
• New York Magazine named 129 Mount Sinai physicians to its “Best Doctors” list, more than any individual hospital in New York City.^[16]
• In 2012, Mount Sinai Medical Center was awarded the HIMSS Enterprise Davies Award of Excellence for use of health information technology.^[17]
• In 2010, the New York State Department of Health named Mount Sinai Hospital the safest place for a patient receiving angioplasty.^[18]
• In 2009, The Scientist magazine ranked Mount Sinai School of Medicine 15th overall in their “Best Places to Work in Academia” survey.^[19]
• In 2009, the American Nurses Credentialing Center (ANCC)'s Magnet Award for Nursing Excellence was awarded to Mount Sinai – the first full-service hospital in New York City to achieve redesignation. Only six percent of hospitals in the nation have received Magnet designation, and only two percent have received redesignation.^[20]
• In 2008, Mount Sinai Medical Center received the Public & Community Service Emmy Award presented by the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences (NATAS).^[21]
• In 2008, Mount Sinai was recognized for improved performance in Thomson Reuters' "100 Top Hospitals" list. The Mount Sinai Medical Center, as a major teaching hospital, was the only hospital in Manhattan, New York to be awarded this high honor.^[22]
• In 2006, the American Society for Bariatric Surgery named Mount Sinai a "Surgery Center of Excellence."^[23]
• In 2006, Mount Sinai and its advertising agency, DeVito/Verdi, took home the highest honors at the 23rd Annual Healthcare Advertising Awards. The campaign was awarded top prize in the Large Hospitals Group for three different categories: Magazine, Billboard and Radio.^[24]
• In 2004, Mount Sinai Medical Center hired New York ad agency, Devito/Verdi, to rebuild Mount Sinai’s reputation as one of the leading academic medical centers in the country and raise awareness of innovation and medical advancements.

Firsts at the hospital

Medical firsts

A significant number of diseases were first described at Mount Sinai Hospital in the last 160+ years including Brill's disease, Buerger's disease, Churg-Strauss disease, collagen disease, Crohn's disease, eosinophilic granuloma of bone, Glomus Jugulare Tumor, Libman-Sacks disease, Moschcowitz disease, polymyalgia rheumatica,^[25] and Tay-Sachs disease.^[26]

Other "firsts" include:

• First textbook in Geriatrics (1914), and first Department of Geriatrics in a U.S. Medical School^[27]
• First American textbook on thoracic surgery (1925)^[28]
• First to describe concept behind TB skin testing (Shwartzman phenomenon)
• First liver transplant (New York State) (1988)^[29]
• First to develop concept of subcellular pathology
• First to link cigarettes and asbestos to cancer^[26]
• First in U.S. to use platinum to treat ovarian cancer^[30]
• First to develop particular in vitro fertilization technique to assist sperm in egg cell penetration
• First to identify marker now used to identify risk for preterm birth
• First to combine radiation and chemotherapy to treat ovarian and breast cancer^[26]
• First to create a genetically engineered vaccine (for influenza) (1969)^[31]
• First to identify the gene for Marfan Syndrome, an often fatal connective tissue disorder.
• First to chemically induce cancer cells to return to normal patterns of development
• First to pioneer the use of stapes mobilization operation to treat particular kinds of deafness^[26]
• First use of kidney dialysis in the U.S. (1948)^[32]
• First to establish an artificial kidney center in New York City^[4]
• First successful use of a cardiac stress test
• First to perform a blood transfusion in a fetus
• First to establish a diabetic prenatal clinic in New York City^[4]
• First to perform a jaw transplant in New York State and first jaw transplant ever to combine donor jaw with bone marrow from the patient^[33]
• First to receive a cardiogram transmitted across the country via telephone wire^[34]

Timeline of other significant events

• 1852 – Hospital chartered as "The Jews’ Hospital" in New York.
• 1855 – “The Jews’ Hospital” opens for patients on June 5.^[35]
• 1866 – To free itself of racial or religious distinction, The Jews' Hospital changes it name to "The Mount Sinai Hospital."
• 1872 – First women appointed to professional positions.
• 1886 – The Eye and Ear Service is created; Dr. Josephine Walter, the first American woman to serve a formal residency in a general hospital, is granted a diploma.
• 1908 – Dr. Rueben Ottenberg is the first to perform blood transfusions with routine compatibility test and to point out that blood groups are hereditary.
• 1919 – Dr. I.C. Rubin introduces the use of peruterine insufflation of the fallopian tubes for the diagnosis and treatment of sterility in women.
• 1928 – Dr. Moses Swick develops a method for introducing radio-opaque media into the blood stream for visualization of the urinary tract.
• 1932 – Crohn's Disease, a chronic inflammatory disease of the intestine, is identified by Drs. Burrill Crohn, Leon Ginzburg and Gordon D. Oppenheimer.
• 1938 – The nation’s second blood bank is created.
• 1953 – The Jack Martin Respirator Center admits its first polio patients.
• 1962 – Dr. Arthur Grishman receives the first medical data, a cardiogram, transmitted successfully via the telephone lines.
• 1963 – The New York State Board of Regents grants a charter for the establishment of a school of medicine.
• 1968 – The Graduate School of Biological Sciences admits its first students.
• 1974 – The Adolescent Health Center is established – the first primary care program in New York designed specifically for the needs of adolescents.
• 1982 – The Department of Geriatrics and Adult Development is created – the first such department in an American medical school.
• 1986 – Doctors perform the first blood transfusion into the vein of an unborn fetus.
• 1988 – Mount Sinai performs the first liver transplant in New York State.
• 1989 – The Center for Excellence in Youth Education is established, growing from other youth outreach programs that began at Mount Sinai in 1968.
• 1992 – The Department of Human Genetics is established.
• 1998 – Recanati/Miller Transplantation Unit opens.
• 2006 – Mount Sinai Heart opens, a combination of clinicians, researchers and educators working to provide an integrated approach to cardiac care.
• 2011 – The first center for chronic fatigue syndrome in a major medical center and medical school in the United States is established.
• 2012 – Mount Sinai Hospital opened New York City's First Emergency Room for geriatrics patients.^[36]
• 2012 – It received an advanced certification from The Joint Commission for excellence in palliative care.^[37]
• 2013 – It became the first hospital in New York State to receive Joint Commission Comprehensive Stroke Center Certification.^[38]

Areas of concentration

Noteworthy individuals

Noted benefactors

• Leon Black donated $10 million to create the Black Family Stem Cell Institute.^[39]
• Carl Icahn donated $25 million to Mount Sinai Medical Center for advanced medical research; a large building primarily devoted to research was renamed from the "East Building" to the "Icahn Medical Institute."^[40] In 2012, Icahn pledged $200 million to the institution.^[41] In exchange, the medical school was renamed the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and the genomics institute led by Eric Schadt was renamed the Icahn Institute for Genomics and Multiscale Biology.
• Frederick Klingenstein, former CEO of Wertheim & Co., and wife Sharon Klingenstein donated $75 million, the largest single gift in the history of Mount Sinai, to establish an institute for scientific research and create a scholarship fund.^[42]
• Henry Kravis and wife Marie-Josée Kravis donated $15 million to establish the "Center for Cardiovascular Health" as well as funding a professorship.
• Samuel A. Lewis, politician and philanthropist in the late 19th century
• Hermann Merkin gave $2 million in dedication of the kosher kitchen at the hospital.
• Derald Ruttenberg donated $7 million to establish the Ruttenberg Cancer Center at Mount Sinai and later contributed $8 million more.^[43]
• Martha Stewart donated $5 million to start the Martha Stewart Center for Living at Mount Sinai Hospital. The center promotes access to medical care and offers support to caregivers needing referrals or education.^[44]
• James Tisch and wife Merryl Tisch donated $40 million to establish The Tisch Cancer Institute, a state-of-the-art, patient-oriented comprehensive cancer care and research facility.^[45]

Noted staff

• Jacob M. Appel, bioethicist and liberal commentator^[46]
• Burrill Bernard Crohn, an American gastroenterologist and one of the first to describe the disease of which he is the namesake, Crohn's disease
• Valentin Fuster, Director of Mount Sinai Heart, The Zena and Michael A. Wiener Cardiovascular Institute, The Marie-Josée and Henry R. Kravis Center for Cardiovascular Health, The Richard Gorlin, MD/Heart Research Foundation Professor, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai
• Irving B. Goldman, first president of the American Academy of Facial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, 1964
• Jonathan L. Halperin, Director of Clinical Cardiology in the Zena and Michael A. Wierner Cardiovascular Institute
• Michael Heidelberger, American immunologist who is regarded as the father of modern immunology
• Abraham Jacobi, pediatrician and president of the American Medical Association
• Blair Lewis, an American gastroenterologist who helped develop the American Gastroenterological Association's position statement on occult and obscure gastrointestinal bleeding
• Isidor Clinton Rubin, a gynecologist and infertility specialist
• Jonas Salk, inventor of the polio vaccine, worked as a staff physician at Mount Sinai after medical school^[47]
• Milton Sapirstein, clinical psychiatrist. Sought "to mesh the advances being made in neurobiology in the 1940's with psychoanalytic concepts."^[48]

See also

• Cedars-Sinai Medical Center

References

Notes

Further reading

• This House of Noble Deeds: The Mount Sinai Hospital, 1852–2002 by Arthur H. Aufses, Jr. and Barbara Niss
• The Sinai Nurse: A History of Nursing at the Mount Sinai Hospital, 1852–2000 by Marjorie Gulla Lewis and Sylvia M. Barker
• The Social Work-Medicine Relationship: 100 Years at Mount Sinai by Helen Rehr

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Mount Sinai Hospital, New York.

• Official website
• The Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai
• Mount Sinai Health System
• Guide to the Mount Sinai Hospital (New York, N.Y.) Records 1851-1994 at the American Jewish Historical Society