Montefiore Medical Center

History

Montefiore was founded by "leaders of New York’s Jewish community" as the Montefiore Home for Chronic Invalids, and opened at Avenue A and East 84th Street in Manhattan on October 26, 1884, Moses Montefiore's 100th birthday. In its early years, it housed mostly patients with tuberculosis and other chronic illnesses. After growing out of its original building, the hospital moved uptown to Broadway and West 138th Street in 1888. It was renamed Montefiore Hospital for Chronic Diseases in 1901, and moved again, to its current location in the Bronx and was renamed Montefiore Home and Hospital for Chronic Diseases in 1913. It was again renamed, as Montefiore Hospital for Chronic Diseases in 1920, as Montefiore Hospital and Medical Center on October 11, 1964, and as the Henry and Lucy Moses Division of Montefiore Medical Center in 1981 when it took over the daily operations of Einstein Hospital.

Montefiore established the United States' first hospital departments of social medicine and home health care. In 2001, it established a new pediatric hospital, the Children's Hospital at Montefiore. The hospital made international headlines when a series of operations successfully separated the conjoined twins Carl and Clarence Aguirre of the Philippines. Montefiore Headache Center, the oldest headache center in the world, was ranked number one among New York Best Hospitals in 2006 by New York Magazine. The Emergency Department is among the five busiest in the United States. Its hospitals provide more than 85,000 inpatient stays per year, including more than 7,000 births. In 2007, it was among over 530 New York City arts and social service institutions to receive part of a $20 million grant from the Carnegie Corporation, which was made possible through a donation by New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg. On September 9, 2015, Montefiore assumed operational and financial control of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine from Yeshiva University.

Divisions and centers

The 726-bed Moses Division is located in the Norwood section, and includes the 106-bed Children's Hospital at Montefiore and the Greene Medical Arts Pavilion, an outpatient care and diagnostic testing facility. The 431-bed Jack D. Weiler Hospital is also operated by Montefiore and is located about 4 miles away, adjacent to the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Morris Park section. Montefiore Medical Park, an ambulatory care facility that contains offices for outpatient visits, full-time clinical practices, and administrative offices for clinical departments, is a short distance away from Einstein. In 2008, Montefiore acquired Our Lady of Mercy Medical Center, a 360-bed hospital in the north Bronx that had been part of the Catholic health system, and which currently provides inpatient and outpatient primary and consultative care for communities of the Bronx. It was named the North Division of Montefiore, and then the Wakefield Division. As training hospitals, both the Moses-Weiler and the Wakefield campuses run Internal Medicine residency programs and fellowship programs in the Division of Geriatrics. Montefiore also runs 23 community-based locations throughout the Bronx and Westchester that comprise the Montefiore Medical Group [1]. In March 2013, Montefiore acquired Westchester Square Medical Center, a community hospital that had operated under bankruptcy court protection for nearly seven years, renamed it Montefiore Westchester Square, and transformed into a surgical center and free-standing emergency room.[2]

Along with the Children's Hospital, Montefiore is home to the renowned Montefiore Einstein Center for Cancer Care [3], the Montefiore Einstein Center for Heart and Vascular Care, [4], and the Montefiore Einstein Center for Transplantation [5]. Montefiore is also home to the Residency Program in Social Medicine, one of the nation's oldest, most successful primary care training programs focused on preparing physicians to practice in under-served communities.

Deaths of notable people

Leadership

Steven M. Safyer, M.D.,[6] has been President and Chief Executive Officer of Montefiore since 2008. An accomplished physician leader and highly respected healthcare executive, Dr. Safyer has been at Montefiore for 25 years, as Senior Vice President and Chief Medical Officer before becoming President.