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Amy Brown hopes to reach out to Jewish volunteers.
have been plagued by insufficient
funds from Medicaid and Medicare
reimbursements, part of the reason
health costs to the consumer have
soared.
Accordingly, the percentage of the
Gross National Product spent on
health care has doubled from 5 per-
cent in the 1960s to the current 11
percent.
Before the 1980s, hospitals were
paid actual cost reimbursements for
services and equipment purchased.
Medical professionals were encourag-
ed to spend freely. Hospitals — once
places where the poor went to die —
became lucrative businesses.
Today, hospitals hoping to remain
independent are forming corporations
that purchase medical practices and
set up satellite facilities. Modern
medical practices allow procedures
that once required hospitalization to
be performed in outpatient clinics.
In its quest to remain solvent,
Sinai two years ago formed Sinai
Health Services, a parent corporation
which oversees operations for the
hospital, its satellites and its physi-
cians. Administrator Shapiro is presi-
dent of Sinai Health Services and
Sinai Hospital.
Kosher cook Irene Weiss prepares a meal as Pola Friedman and Rabbi Leonard Pearlstein, her supervisor,
look on. -
Under Shapiro's administration,
Sinai Health Services opened the
Berry Health Center, an outpatient
surgery facility in Farmington Hills;
the Goldin Health Care Center, a
rehabilitation and psychiatric clinic
in West Bloomfield; and the
Hechtman Health Care Center in
Bingham Farms, where numerous
staff physicians have offices.
Most recently, Sinai acquired
Oakland Internists Associates, a
15-doctor practice to be housed in a
medical complex now under construc-
tion in Southfield at Northwestern
Highway and Franklin Road. It is
scheduled to open next spring.
Next on Sinai's drawing board is
a sophisticated diagnostic imaging
center expected to open at North-
western Highway and Middlebelt in
two years. It will include a magnetic
resonance imager that can detect
brain lesions, a CT scanner and X-ray
facilities.
Six southeastern Michigan
hospitals have closed or converted to
outpatient facilities in the past five
years. According to Donald Potter,
president of the Southeast Michigan
Hospital Council of the Michigan
Hospital Association, hospitals
throughout the country will continue
to merge and convert to outpatient
facilities.
By the year 2000, he says, six ma-
jor health care corporations will
dominate southeast Michigan's
medical market. The industry, he
says, will follow a "boutique" concept
that provides more specialized ser-
vices in fewer places.
Sinai, Shapiro predicts, will
operate a host of satellites, maintain
a downsized, Detroit-based facility
and remain an independent entity.
In 10 years, he says, Sinai will be
a "hospital without walls;' that will
provide many services.
When they opened the hospital in
1953, Sinai's founders followed the
same mission as other Jewish-
sponsored hospitals — to help create
jobs for young Jews who found the
American medical world discrimina-
tory. It was the successor to the North
End Clinic, founded with a $75,000
gift in the late 1920s.
Jewish medical origins in Detroit
date back to the early 1900s, when
the first Jewish clinic opened with a
$12,000 donation by the late
Seligman Schloss, a clothing
manufacturer.
D
uring a speech at Sinai's 1987
annual meeting, Jewish Wel-
fare Federation President Dr.
Conrad Giles said times were chang-
ing in the medical world. But, says
Pola Friedman, the more things
change, the more they remain the
same.
"The need for a Jewish hospital is
as crucial as ever," she wrote in a
response letter. "The reasons for the
inception of Sinai Hospital were reac-
tive. The reasons for it remaining a
Jewish-sponsored institution are pro-
active."
During his campaign to be staff
representative on the hospital board
of trustees, Dr. Jerrold Weinberg said
he wanted to bring Sinai closer to the
Jewish community.
"We can't become complacent.
There are no official policies against
Jewish doctors that would stop them
from landing jobs, but we can never
be so overconfident that society has
become so liberal that there is no
anti-Semitism?'
Because of a loss in state and
federal funds and improved outpa-
tient facilities, hospital occupancy
rates across the country have