Mount Sinai Hospital

Mount Sinai Hospital is a member institution of Sinai Health System. Other member institutions are Holy Cross Hospital, Sinai Children’s Hospital, Schwab Rehabilitation Hospital, Sinai Medical Group, Sinai Community Institute and Sinai Urban Health Institute. Mount Sinai Hospital is a private not for profit safety net hospital.

Our host was Mr. Jim Bicak, Vice President of Mount Sinai Hospital with an architectural background, has over 25 years experience in planning and designing of healthcare environment. He and his colleagues Arsenal Love, Jesse Green, David Berkey and Roberta Rakove gave us an overall introduction about Sinai Health System and told us about the circumstances Mount Sinai is facing now.

Mount Sinai Hospital serves 19-20 communities with a total serving population about 1.9 million. About 60% of the patients received are covered by Medicaid, which means these people are low-income adults, children, and elderly people. As a not for profit safety net hospital, Mount Sinai Hospital has to take the responsibility to take care all of these people, which in turn gives the hospital a low revenue. Most of the fund is from government relationships and foundations. This is a bittersweet story in my point of view. On one hand, Mount Sinai has been doing great things since the hospital was established; on the other hand, the budget has always been limited for renovation because of the not for profit “responsibility”. That’s why Mount Sinai Hospital could still have those 2-bed patient rooms, which is rare these days.

Despite that, Sinai Health System has never stopped doing great. As Mr. Jesse Green mentioned, Sinai Community Institute has 20-25 programs impact community and healthcare. Subsequent Pregnancy Program has reduced 80% of young mothers to have a second child until they complete their high school study. And Children Asthma Program of Sinai Urban Health Institute has helped lots of families that have children with asthma to assess their houses to create an “asthma friendly” environment. These things touched me deeply.