Mount Sinai Medical Center

Mount Sinai Medical Center is a 319-bed major urban hospital in Chicago, Illinois, with its main campus located adjacent to Douglas Park at 15th Street and California Avenue on the city's West Side. The hospital was established in 1912 under the name Maimonides Hospital, with a mission of serving poor immigrants from Europe while providing training to Jewish physicians, primarily of Eastern European descent.^[1] After a period of financial difficulty, it closed in 1918, and was reopened as "Mount Sinai Hospital" in 1919, with 60 beds and continuing its original mission.

History

The second Jewish hospital to be established in the city, Mount Sinai Hospital differed from Michael Reese Hospital, which had been established in 1881 on Chicago's South Side primarily by German Jews, whereas Mount Sinai was founded by Eastern European Jews. Unlike other hospitals, Mount Sinai had a kosher kitchen.

Morris Kurtzon sought to provide the West Side community in Chicago a suitable hospital, one where Jewish doctors could practice without facing exclusion from hospital staffs by anti-Semitism. Purchasing with his own money the bankrupt Maimonides Hospital, Kurtzon re-organized it under the name Mount Sinai Hospital Association. He refused an attractive offer to sell the property to the University of Illinois, preferring to donate it for the benefit of the entire community. The community responded to this gesture with a strenuous effort to build financial support for the new hospital. Although women had not traditionally been welcome to participate in many communal activities, the early history of Mount Sinai included a strong presence of women among its supporters. Kurtzon devoted a good deal of his time to planning and designing the new facility. The final hospital plans were drawn up by the Chicago architectural firm of Schmidt, Garden and Erikson. Garcy Corporation of Piedmont, Alabama, designed custom equipment for the new hospital, much of it made of stainless steel.

Patient services

Mount Sinai Medical Center is a non-profit institution, which provides charity care to 59% of its patients and is a teaching hospital affiliated with Rosalind Franklin University of Medicine and Science and the University of Illinois at Chicago. The medical center is operated by Sinai Health System. The hospital is a Level 1 trauma center for adults and children, chest pain center, and stroke center. While operating at a financial loss in an aging facility, even in its current state the hospital provides medical care to a vital part of the community. Ruth Rothstein, who served as the president of the hospital from the 1970s to the 1990s, resisted calls to move Mount Sinai to the suburbs.

References

External links

• Mt Sinai Hospital Medical Center - Chicago, IL, Hospital-Data.com.
• John Fries, Profile: Mount Sinai VP Jackie Conrad: Innovation in Nursing Management Leading to Positive Results, Chicago Hospital News (July 2003).