The Mount Sinai Hospital--a brief history

In 1852, The Jews Hospital was founded for the increasing number of Jews in New York. It opened in 1855 with 45 beds on West 28th Street; 92% of the patients were indigent. In 1864, the hospital formally became nonsectarian and, in 1866, changed its name to The Mount Sinai Hospital. The medical staff was primarily Jewish, because until relatively recently, it was difficult for Jewish doctors to obtain postgraduate training or specialist posts at major New York hospitals. As the Jewish population moved uptown, so did The Mount Sinai Hospital: in 1870 to 66th Street, and in 1904 to 100th Street, with 456 beds, growing with new buildings and services to the current 1100 beds, 50,000 discharges, 400,000 inpatient days and 300,000 outpatient visits each year. Services increasingly became specialized, and then subspecialized. Key innovations included the choice of interns by competitive examination (1872), an advisory Medical Board (1872), the Nurse Training School (1881), the library (1883), the Alumni Association (1896), a professional medical hospital administrator (1903), research laboratories (1904), clinicopathological conferences (1905), the Social Services Department (1906), postgraduate teaching programs (1923), full-time chiefs of clinical services (1944), the dedication of the Mount Sinai School of Medicine (1968), and the merger in 1998 into the Mount Sinai-New York University Medical Center.