BY DR. JEREMY BOAL | Modern healthcare is evolving. No longer are monolithic hospitals sustainable or even desired. Nationwide, hospitals are closing at a rate of roughly 30 per year, as healthcare turns to new models that focus on keeping patients out of hospital beds and in ambulatory, outpatient settings. In response, hospitals need to be nimbler and more adaptive, and founded in the technological and medical advances of today.
That’s why, at Mount Sinai, we are building a new $1 billion vision and platform for care in Downtown Manhattan. This vision is centered around a new, state-of-the-art Mount Sinai Beth Israel (M.S.B.I.) hospital, but this transformation does not stop at its doors. Instead, we are investing in services and programs that reach into the community to serve you where you need it most: close to home.
Last week, this vision took a major step forward as we filed Certificate of Need (C.O.N.) applications with the New York State Department of Health for the new M.S.B.I., an enhanced and fully integrated New York Eye and Ear Infirmary of Mount Sinai and a new Mount Sinai Comprehensive Behavioral Health Center.
The new M.S.B.I. will feature all-private inpatient beds, cutting-edge cardiac and neurologic interventional services, an operative platform, and a state-of-the-art emergency department. The facility will be integrated with the New York Eye and Ear Infirmary of Mount Sinai (N.Y.E.E.) — a nearly 200-year-old institution that provides world-class care and education in ear, nose, throat and ophthalmologic care. This integration will enhance and revitalize services available at N.Y.E.E., including a 24/7 eye trauma emergency department and access to state-of-the-art imaging, pharmacy and laboratory services.
Alongside the construction of the new hospital, we are also making the single largest private investment in behavioral health in New York’s history — a $140 million commitment to create the Mount Sinai Comprehensive Behavioral Health Center. As one of the city’s largest mental healthcare providers, we firmly believe that treatment of mental illness and substance-use disorders is critical to improving the overall health status of all our communities. This one-stop setting for psychiatric, addiction, physical health and social-service needs will be located on the Lower East Side (in the former Rivington House) and connect our Downtown patients with a holistic model of care that preserves all the existing behavioral health and addiction services that M.S.B.I. currently provides — and adds nearly a dozen more. The ability to provide primary care alongside behavioral inpatient care and specialized outpatient care is a game changer for our patients.
These new projects come alongside our ongoing investment in services for Downtown. Our existing Union Square facility, which is currently being renovated, co-locates over 30 unique specialty practices. And, in addition, it recently opened the Martha Stewart Center for Living, as well as a new seven-day-a-week urgent-care program.
The transformative nature of this plan is in the interconnection of our entire river-to-river network of 20 separate locations below 34th St. This represents an entirely new approach to the delivery of care for New Yorkers, and our commitment to adapt our health system to make sure our patients can get the care they need, when and where they need it.
Boal is president, Mount Sinai Downtown, and executive vice president and chief clinical officer, Mount Sinai Health System.
