Sweeping change in the practice of health care is leading to a transformation in the Mount Sinai Health System’s downtown footprint. A planned investment of more than $500 million will create the new “Mount Sinai Downtown,” an expanded and unified network of facilities—stretching from the East River to the Hudson River—that will provide highly skilled emergency care, urgent care, outpatient, inpatient, and ambulatory services to people living and working in New York City below 34th Street.
This new Downtown “campus” will reflect today’s proactive approach to keeping entire communities healthy and out of the hospital, a shift in focus from the traditional fee-for-service model of care that has relied on one all-purpose hospital anchoring a specific community. This effort will be supported by a new, smaller Mount Sinai Downtown Beth Israel Hospital—with approximately 70 beds and a state-of-the-art emergency department (ED)—located near 14th Street and Second Avenue, and an enhanced New York Eye and Ear Infirmary of Mount Sinai (NYEE), which will continue to provide specialized and highly skilled services.
“We have thought long and hard about what the future of medicine will look like, and we are designing a health care system that is responsive to the future,” says Kenneth L. Davis, MD, President and Chief Executive Officer of the Mount Sinai Health System. “Mount Sinai Downtown is a dramatic next step that will enable us to improve access and increase quality by providing care for residents of downtown Manhattan where they live and work.”
Indeed, the transformed Mount Sinai Downtown will serve patients through a coordinated series of smaller facilities that are more closely aligned with their health care needs. During the construction phase, the current Mount Sinai Beth Israel (MSBI) Hospital will remain open, and all services will be available within the Mount Sinai Health System. All services currently available at MSBI will still be available downtown, except for deliveries and care of the most complex conditions, which will be attended to at Centers of Excellence throughout the Health System.
Numerous technological advances are making it possible for the Health System to invest in smaller, more nimble sites that are capable of providing patients with the potential for a higher level of care. New microsurgical techniques are increasingly being done in ambulatory settings, and effective apps and telemedicine are making home-based care more widespread.
“Mount Sinai has the opportunity to create a campus in downtown Manhattan that will deliver tomorrow’s medicine today,” says Dennis S. Charney, MD, Anne and Joel Ehrenkranz Dean, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and President for Academic Affairs, Mount Sinai Health System. “Digital medicine enables us to monitor a patient’s health in his or her home and transmit that information to the doctor’s office in order to keep the patient well. The latest findings in genomics and digital medicine will become part of the continuation of care provided in our downtown campus.”
Highlights of Mount Sinai’s Downtown Campus
Central to the downtown transformation is a smaller Mount Sinai Downtown Beth Israel Hospital, with a new ED for adults and children that will continue to provide emergency care to patients in the neighborhood. The ED will include treatment bays and observation beds, and will be able to handle all emergencies such as stroke and heart attack. The new hospital will be adjacent to NYEE but will have its own identity and entrance. Its presence will allow NYEE to reopen its New York Metropolitan Eye Trauma Center. NYEE will also receive upgrades to its operating rooms and other facilities, and will continue to serve as the Health System’s Center of Excellence for ophthalmology and otolaryngology.
The Phillips Ambulatory Care Center (PACC), with more than 275,000 square feet of space that occupies the highly trafficked area around Union Square, is currently under renovation. Once completed, it will offer ambulatory surgery, 24/7 services for extended recovery, endoscopy, infusion and diagnostic services, and a wide range of multispecialty care, including pediatrics and obstetrics. PACC will also house a comprehensive urgent care center with weekend and evening hours by early 2017. Mount Sinai will also create a Comprehensive Behavioral Health Institute, anchored at MSBI’s Bernstein Pavilion, with 150 behavioral health beds. A substantial capital investment will go toward a new intensive outpatient care program, as well as enhanced inpatient, ambulatory, and emergency services.
Across town, on 15th Street between Eighth and Ninth Avenues, in the building that also houses Google Inc.’s New York City headquarters, the 80,000-square-foot MSBI Comprehensive Cancer Center West is also under renovation. When completed, the facility will include an expanded surgical program as well as primary care, cancer care, and a full range of women’s health care services.
Throughout these state-of-the-art facilities, Mount Sinai will provide laboratory, imaging, and pharmaceutical services. More than 16 downtown physician practice offices with more than 600 physicians will provide patients with primary and multispecialty care. These practices are expected to handle more than 1 million patient visits a year.
A Responsible Transformation
The Mount Sinai Health System has begun to reach out to elected officials and community leaders with the goal of guaranteeing a smooth transition for patients and staff.
“The reality of health care economics is that if we don’t become the most efficient system, we can’t possibly survive,” says Dr. Davis. “The Downtown campus is part of a larger campus called the Mount Sinai Health System that will have Centers of Excellence throughout New York City and provide all of our patients with the highest quality of care.”
