# Mount Sinai Beth Israel

Mount Sinai Beth Israel is a 799-bed teaching hospital in Manhattan. It is part of the Mount Sinai Health System, a nonprofit health system formed in September 2013 by the merger of Continuum Health Partners and Mount Sinai Medical Center, and an academic affiliate of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. The Mount Sinai Health System's school of nursing, Mount Sinai Phillips School of Nursing (PSON), was founded at Beth Israel Hospital in 1902.

## History

Beth Israel is Hebrew for "House of Israel." The hospital was incorporated as Beth Israel Hospital on May 28, 1890, by a group of 40 Orthodox Jews on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, each of whom paid 25 cents to set up a hospital dedicated to serving immigrant Jews living in the tenement slums of the Lower East Side. At the time, most of New York's hospitals would not treat Jewish patients. It initially opened a dispensary at 206 Broadway in 1891, and moved to Jefferson and Cherry Streets in 1895. In 1902, the hospital established its nursing school, today known as Mount Sinai Phillips School of Nursing (PSON). On March 12, 1929, it moved to First Avenue and 16th Street, facing Stuyvesant Square, and the old building was converted into an old age home, the Home of Old Israel. It purchased its neighbor Manhattan General Hospital in 1964 and was renamed Beth Israel Medical Center on March 10, 1965.
By then it had extended beyond its Jewish base and served the entire population of Lower Manhattan including Manhattan's Lower East Side, Chinatown, Gramercy, the West Village, and Chelsea. In 1988 it had the largest network of heroin-treatment clinics in the United States with 7,500 patients and 23 facilities. It acquired Doctors Hospital on the Upper East Side in the 1990s, renaming it Beth Israel Medical Center-Singer Division, and Kings Highway Hospital Center in Brooklyn in 1995, renaming it Beth Israel Medical Center-Kings Highway Division. In 2004, the Singer Division closed and the Manhattan inpatient operations were consolidated in the buildings on First Avenue at 16th Street in Manhattan.
As of 2010 Mount Sinai Beth Israel had residency training programs in nearly every major field of medicine including Emergency Medicine, Internal Medicine, Surgery, Otolaryngology, Oral and maxillofacial surgery, Radiology, Family Medicine, Dermatology, Obstetrics and Gynecology, Neurology, Ophthalmology, Pathology, Psychiatry, Podiatry, and Urology. Mount Sinai Beth Israel also has a department of Chiropractic, Music Therapy, and Acupuncture.
On November 22, 2013, the name of Beth Israel Medical Center was changed to Mount Sinai Beth Israel as a part of the merger with Mount Sinai to form the Mount Sinai Health System.
On May 25, 2016, Mount Sinai announced a significant restructuring and downsizing, with plans to build a new hospital with only 70 inpatient beds on a site several blocks away, after which the main hospital on 16th Street would close and be sold.
On June 11, 2017, the hospital's Labor and Delivery Department closed, followed by the hospital's "Continuum Center for Health and Healing" later in the year.

## Closure attempts

In October 2023, Mount Sinai Health System announced its plan to close Mount Sinai Beth Israel by July 12, 2024, pending approval from the New York State Department of Health. Mount Sinai Beth Israel cited at the time that operations were at 20% capacity and losses of $1 billion in the last decade as reasons for the closure. The announcement prompted community protesters to form the Community Coalition to Save Beth Israel Hospital, which sued to keep the hospital open.
The court issued a temporary restraining order against the hospital in February 2024. The health department opposed the order, claiming that the court should not intervene in the regulation of medical facilities.
In August 2024, Moody’s Investor Service downgraded Mount Sinai Hospital and Icahn School of Medicine to its lowest investment grade, Baa3. Moody’s cited $1.8 billion in debt by the end of 2023, delays in closing the branch, and cash flow damages due to a cyber-attack in February 2024 at Mount Sinai’s payment system, Change Healthcare.
Also in August 2024, the suit against closure was dismissed. A new complaint by the Community Coalition immediately followed the judgment.
In February 2025, the August 2024 lawsuit against closure was dismissed by New York Supreme Court Judge Jeffrey Pearlman. According to Gothamist, the hospital subsequently set a closing date for March 26, 2025.