couldn't land the non-Jewish hospitals
they thought they could?
Still, they went ahead and did it. In
January 1986, the consortium became
Premier Hospitals Alliance, the Jewish
origins of the group now entirely obscured.
We figured that would really send a sig-
nal," says Weinstein, speaking of the
name change. And it did. Soon they landed
Georgia Baptist Medical Center. And
Bishop Clarkson Memorial Hospital, in
Omaha, Nebraska, an Episcopalian in-
stitution. And the Borgess hospital. The
only thing we don't have," says Weinstein,
plainly pleased with Premier's progress,
"is Seventh Day Adventist. We're very
ecumenical."
Today, Premier's services range from
DRG information technology to malprac-
tice insurance, to liability coverage, to
group purchasing, to capital equipment
leasing, to market research, to manage-
ment information systems — everything a
hospital needs today to weather the new,
more competitive health care climate.
At least within Premier, it had turned
out, Jewish hospitals were hospitals first,
only then Jewish.
A
$12,000 gift by Seligman
Schloss, a successful clothing
manufacturer, launched De-
troit's first Jewish clinic in 1903. Bernard
Ginsberg, an automobile parts manufac-
turer, helped expand it in 1908. Philan-
thropist Henry Wineman's $75,000 gift led
to establishment of the North End Clinic.
Today's Sinai boasts a Shapero School, a
Shiffman Wing, a Fisher Pavillion .. .
Each was the product of a wealthy family's
philanthropy. Each was an expression of
commitment, pride, even a kind of owner-
ship in the Jewish hospital of Detroit.
Today that attitude of personal prop-
rietorship may be eroding.
The Jewish hospital's day-to-day fi-
nancial dependence on the _organized
Jewish community is not large today and
hasn't been for years. Hospitals today,
Jewish or not, get most of their money
from Medicare, Medicaid, and private
health insurance. New Yofk's Mt. Sinai,
for example, gets just $1.35 million per
year from the Jewish federation — about
four-tenths of one percent of its operating
budget, according to Al Schwartz, associ-
ate executive director of community serv-
ices for medical and geriatrics at UJA-
Federation of New York. In Detroit, the
$150,000 that Sinai gets from the Jewish
Welfare Federation is seen equally by hos-
pital head Irving Shapiro and Federation
President Conrad Giles as a token. "It's
really symbolic," says Shapiro, an evi-
dence of commitment."
But buildings, pavillions, clinics and
other major capital projects are another
story. As in the case of Sinai of Detroit,
these have traditionally been the work of
wealthy Jewish families for whom they
served as an outlet for their philanthropy.
And today, while the philanthropic in-
stincts are still there, other outlets for ex-
pressing them abound.
Wealthy Jews today are accepted,
even courted, by the larger, non-Jewish
world; the boards of symphonies,
museums, and elite universities are, for
the most part, no longer closed to them.
And to some Jews, this larger, now more
accessible world outside the Jewish com-
munity glows with hidden promise, seems
less insular — and carries more status.
"There's more yichus (prestige) in being on
the Met board than in being on ours, and a
lot more social clout," a New York federa-
tion officer told Charles Silberman, author
of A Certain People. So that compared to,
In 1919, Sinai Hospital's Frank B. Calm Summer
Tent for Babies provided pediatric patients with
fresh air during hot days in Baltimore.
In a photograph taken about ten years ago, Dr.
Joseph Honet, head of Sinai of Detroit's
Department of Rehabilitative Medicine,
supervises a patient undergoing physical
therapy at the hospital.
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