Mount Sinai Hospital, New York

Mount Sinai Hospital, founded in 1852, is one of the oldest and largest teaching hospitals in the United States. In 2009, Mount Sinai Hospital was ranked as one of the best hospitals in the U.S. by U.S. News & World Report in 11 specialties.

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

The hospital is also affiliated with one of the foremost centers of medical education and biomedical research, Mount Sinai School of Medicine, which opened in September 1968. Together, the two comprise the Mount Sinai Medical Center.

Reputation

 * U.S. News & World Report's "America's Best Hospitals 2009-10" issue ranked Mount Sinai Hospital #1 in the U.S. for geriatrics and #5 in gastroenterology. Other honors from that issue included high rankings for cancer (#48), diabetes & endocrinology (#20), ear, nose & throat (#19), gynecology (#28), heart & heart surgery (#13), kidney disorders (#29), neurology & neurosurgery (#24), psychiatry (#18), pulmonology (#35), rehabilitation (#16), and urology (#45).
 * 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.
 * New York Magazine’s annual “Best Doctors” issue lists 224 Mount Sinai faculty and staff, including those who serve at an affiliated institution. Excluding affiliates, the Mount Sinai Medical Center maintained its strong position in the rankings, with 135 physicians listed. Mount Sinai also ranked above peer institutions including New York Presbyterian/Columbia, Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell, and NYU Langone Medical Center.
 * In 2010, the New York State Department of Health named Mount Sinai Hospital the safest place for a patient receiving angioplasty.
 * In 2009, The Scientist magazine ranked Mount Sinai School of Medicine 15th overall in their “Best Places to Work in Academia” survey.
 * 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.
 * In 2008, Mount Sinai Medical Center received the Public & Community Service Emmy Award presented by the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences (NATAS).
 * 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.
 * In 2006, the American Society for Bariatric Surgery named Mount Sinai a "Surgery Center of Excellence."
 * 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.

History


As U.S. cities grew more crowded in the mid-19th Century, philanthropist Sampson Simson (b 1780, d 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.

The Jews' Hospital, 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.

The Jews' Hospital felt the effects of the escalating Civil War in other ways, as staff doctors and board members were called in to service: Dr. Israel Moses served four years as Lieutenant Colonel in the 72nd; 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.

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.

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.

Now called Mount Sinai Hospital, the institution forged relationships with prescient 19th century medical scholars, including Henry N. Heineman, Frederick S. Mandelbaum, Charles A. Elsberg, Emanuel Libman, Alma de Leon Hendriks, Kate Rich, and, most significantly, Abraham Jacobi, a champion of construction at the hospital's new site on Manhattan's Upper East Side in 1904.

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 portable anesthesia apparatus), meant that Mount Sinai's pool of doctors and experts was in increasing demand. From 1905 to 1911, inpatient and outpatient visits doubled. A $1.35 million expansion of the hospital (equivalent to over 30 million in 2008 based on historical consumer price indexes) raced to keep pace with demand.

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 thousands in its effort to reduce the nursing shortage in the States. Meanwhile, the President of the Medical Board, George Baehr, was called by President Roosevelt to serve as the nation's Chief Medical Director of the Office of Civilian Defense.

These wartime roles would be eclipsed, however, when the men and women of Mount Sinai's Third 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 unit had treated more than 5,000 wounded soldiers.

Since the relative peace following World War II, Mount Sinai has welcomed the first graduating class of the Mount Sinai School of Medicine (in 1970); 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 it has made significant contributions to gene therapy, cardiology, immunotherapy, organ transplants, cancer treatments and minimally invasive surgery.

"Firsts" at Mount Sinai Hospital
A significant number of diseases were first described at Mount Sinai Hospital in the last 150+ 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, and Tay-Sachs disease.

Other "firsts" include:


 * First textbook in Geriatrics (1914), and first Department of Geriatrics in a U.S. Medical School
 * First American textbook on thoracic surgery (1925)
 * First to describe concept behind TB skin testing (Schwartzman Phenonmenon)
 * First liver transplant (New York State) (1988)
 * First to develop concept of subcellular pathology
 * First to link cigarettes and asbestos to cancer
 * First in U.S. to use platinum to treat ovarian cancer
 * 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
 * First to create a genetically-engineered vaccine (for influenza) (1969)
 * 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
 * First to establish an artificial kidney center in New York City
 * First successful use of a cardiac stress test
 * First to perform a blood transfusion in an unborn fetus
 * First to establish a diabetic prenatal clinic in New York City
 * 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
 * First to receive a cardiogram transmitted across the country via telephone wire

Famous patients

 * Julie Andrews, actress (throat operation)
 * Anne Bancroft, actress (uterine cancer)
 * José Raúl Capablanca, world chess champion (stroke)
 * Plácido Domingo, opera singer (malignant polyp in colon)
 * Bill Evans, jazz pianist (died there in 1980)
 * Rudy Giuliani, mayor of New York City (prostate cancer)
 * Lionel Hampton, jazz musician (heart attack)
 * Emanuel Lasker, world chess champion
 * Frank Lautenberg, senator (stomach cancer)
 * Al Lewis, actor (angioplasty)
 * Peter Maas, author
 * Gustav Mahler, composer and conductor (infective endocarditis)
 * Sang Lan, artistic gymnast (treated and rehabilitated at Mount Sinai for about a year after becoming paralyzed at the 1998 Goodwill Games)
 * Norman Mailer, novelist (kidney disease)
 * Harpo Marx, actor (heart complications)
 * Gwyneth Paltrow, actress (gave birth there; to Moses Bruce Anthony Martin)
 * David Paterson, governor of New York (eye surgery for glaucoma)
 * Javier Pérez de Cuéllar, United Nations Secretary-General (quadruple-bypass heart surgery)
 * Ben Stiller, actor (hand fracture)
 * Liv Tyler, actress and model (born there on July 1, 1977)

Famous benefactors

 * Leon Black donated $10 million to create the Black Family Stem Cell Institute.
 * 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."
 * Frederick Klingenstein 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.
 * Henry Kravis and wife Marie-Josée Kravis donated $15 million to establish the "Center for Cardiovascular Health" as well as funding a professorship.
 * Derald Ruttenberg donated $7 million to establish the Ruttenberg Cancer Center at Mount Sinai and later contributed $8 million more.
 * 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.
 * 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.

Famous staff

 * Jacob M. Appel, bioethicist and liberal commentator
 * Burrill Bernard Crohn, an American gastroenterologist and one of the first to describe the disease of which he is the namesake, Crohn's disease
 * Irving B. Goldman, first president of the American Academy of Facial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, 1964
 * Michael Heidelberger, American immunologist who is regarded as the father of modern immunology
 * Abraham Jacobi, pediatrician and president of the American Medical Association
 * 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