Although the Hospital was intended as a sectarian institution, the Jews’ Hospital accepted emergency patients of any religious affiliation. In its first year of operation, the majority of patients were foreign-born. The hospital was expanded during the Civil War to accommodate Union soldiers.
As the Jews’ Hospital was a charitable enterprise, its directors relied on the gifts of friends and members, as well as payments from the state and city, to provide enough to subsidize care. To maintain its eligibility for state and city support, the Jews’ Hospital formally abandoned its sectarian charter in 1866 and was renamed The Mount Sinai Hospital. Its patient base, however, remained predominantly Jewish. In 1872, it moved to a new 120-bed facility on Lexington Avenue, between 66th and 67th Streets, nearly tripling its original capacity.
Since its founding, The Mount Sinai Hospital has moved three times, and with each move came an expansion of services. The first buildings at its current 1,171-bed location on Fifth Avenue at 100th Street were dedicated in 1904.
In the late 1950s the Hospital began plans to establish its own medical school, an unusual move for a hospital. With its chartering in 1963, Mount Sinai School of Medicine became the first medical school to grow out of a non-university in more than 50 years. The fact that the Hospital was encouraged to found a school is a testament to its tradition of excellence in patient care as well as research.
Mount Sinai School of Medicine opened in 1968 in affiliation with The City University of New York. In building the medical school, trustees envisioned a new kind of medical institution — a university of health sciences. This new institution would encompass a medical school supported by a strong teaching hospital, a graduate school of biologic sciences, a graduate school of physical sciences, and an undergraduate school representing allied health fields.
The students in the newly formed Mount Sinai School of Medicine consisted of 36 first-year students, a third-year class with 23 students and 19 graduate students.
In January 2013 Mount Sinai School of Medicine was renamed the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai ranks among the top 20 medical schools in receipt of National Institute of Health grants.