Failure of the merger of the Mount Sinai and New York University hospitals and medical schools: part 2

Abstract

This is the second of two articles in this issue of Academic Medicine that, together, report the author's findings from his study of the attempt by the leaders of Mount Sinai and New York University (NYU) medical centers in New York City to merge their medical schools and hospitals, and the failure of those attempts. After the unsuccessful effort of the trustees to merge the medical schools and hospitals--see the first article--the two institutions successfully created Mount Sinai NYU Health, a new company of the Mount Sinai and NYU hospitals in New York City. Members of the NYU faculty, worried that the new attempt would also include the medical schools, sued their university to prevent the merger. Although they lost the suit, the NYU medical school remained within the university as they had wanted. The hospital merger, like the more comprehensive hospital/medical school merger that failed, was favored by most of the trustees and executives at Mount Sinai. Although supported by many of the NYU trustees, both mergers were strongly opposed by some of the leadership and many of the faculty at the NYU medical center.The hospital merger came into effect in July 1998, but three years later, administration of the hospitals had returned to the separate campuses. In 2008, the merger was officially terminated. Although several of the back-office functions combined, no clinical programs did, as was also the case in other mergers of teaching hospitals. The author concludes with an analysis of why this merger failed while a few others succeeded.