Merger to Form NY 7-Hospital Mega Network

The Boards of Trustees of the Mount Sinai Medical Center and Continuum Health Partners have voted unanimously to approve joining their institutions into a combined entity that will encompass seven major hospital campuses in the New York metropolitan area. The goal of the merger was to form an integrated health care system and academic medical center that could expand access to care in New York while at the same time making care more efficient, the press release explained. The combined entity will operate under the name Mount Sinai Health System. The Mount Sinai Medical Center encompasses both The Mount Sinai Hospital, founded in 1852, and the well-known Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. In contrast, the Continuum Health Partners name that will be dropped was much younger. It was created in 1997 as a name for the parent company of the partnership among Beth Israel Medical Center, Beth Israel Brooklyn, St. Luke's Hospital and Roosevelt Hospital.   Mount Sinai Board of Trustees Chairman Peter W. May will become chairman of the Board for the new combined health system, while Steven Hochberg, Board chairman for Continuum, will become the senior vice chairman of the Boards of Trustees for the Mount Sinai Health System. Kenneth L. Davis, MD, Mount Sinai president and chief executive officer, will become president and CEO of the new entity. Stanley Brezenoff, Continuum’s president and CEO, will retire. The merger is the product of more than six months of talks between the two hospital networks and must be approved by regulators in order to go through. The seven hospital campuses that will form the network are:

• Beth Israel Medical Center (Manhattan)
• Beth Israel Brooklyn
• The Mount Sinai Hospital
• Mount Sinai Queens
• New York Eye & Ear Infirmary
• St. Luke's Hospital
• Roosevelt Hospital

Physicians and scientists affiliated with Continuum hospitals will assume academic appointments at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, which will be the sole medical school for the combined entity. "There is no question that the future holds many challenges for health care providers here in New York and across the country," stated Hochberg in the press release. "The new entity created by bringing together the clinical and administrative excellence of Mount Sinai and Continuum will help provide us a position of significant strength and resourcefulness to meet these challenges head on and continue to provide excellent medical services to our communities."