main entrance on Thirteen Mile Road. JULIE WIENER StaffWriter I t has no Jewish symbols, names or plaques in the hallways and no formal ties to the organized Jewish community. But William Beaumont Hospital has become the de facto Jewish hospital. It is the only metro Detroit hospital that helps rabbis visit their congre- gants by faxing synagogues a list of Jewish patients every day. And the administration is exploring the possi- bility of building a kosher kitchen and creating a "Shabbat" apartment where Orthodox Jews could stay while visit- ing family. As Detroit's official Jewish hospital, Sinai has lost Jewish patients and doc- tors and struggled to maintain a pres- ence through formal ties to the orga- nized Jewish community, while the 929-bed Beaumont — with its subur- ban location and reputation for quali- ty care — has quietly gained them. Beaumont, which also operates a 189-bed hospital building in Troy and medical buildings, nursing homes and rehabilitation services throughout 3/12 1999 6 Detroit Jewish News A combination of loca- tion and high quality of care helps the hospital in Royal Oak claim Jewish patients and doctors as ties to Sinai wane. Oakland County, now enjoys the lion's share of the Detroit Jewish market. According to Beaumont's director of pastoral care, the Rev. Diane Morgan, it is not uncommon to have more than 100 patients (including outpatients) in the Royal Oak hospital at any one time who identify as Jewish. As recently as 1992, only 20 to 25 patients identified as Jewish on any given day. In addition, a 1998 Simmons/Jewish News study found that half of all sub- scribers who visited a hospital in the past year went to Beaumont; the next most popular hospital, Sinai, which is owned by the Detroit Medical Center, had been visited by only a quarter of respondents. Like Sinai, which now operates at less than half of its 600-bed capacity and will merge into neighboring Grace Hospital by fall, Beaumont opened in the early 1950s, just east of Greenfield Road. But Beaumont, a secular institution, was six and a half miles to the north of Sinai. The geo- graphic difference was crucial in the decades that followed. As Oakland County has prospered, location appears to have been a major key to Beaumont's success. In contrast, the DMC's stable of primarily urban hospitals are less conveniently located for many middle-class and affluent people, and serve a higher percentage of uninsured and under-insured peo- ple for whose care government reim- bursements have rapidly declined. But Beaumont's success — the hos- pital is now so full that it has issued a three-month moratorium on granting admissions privileges to new doctors — goes beyond the plot of real estate it owns in Royal Oak. Patients also praised Beaumont for its cleanliness and level of physician and support staff care. Beaumont's Jewish physicians and chaplains described Beaumont as a pleasant workplace that strives to make people from all backgrounds comfortable. Several Jews described Beaumont's staff as "bending over backwards" to accommodate the com- munity's spiritual and cultural needs. View From The Bed Joe Roisman, 52, of Franklin, underwent quintuple bypass surgery and suffered a stroke while at Beaumont in December. Nonetheless, he described his stay as "pleasant, adding "if it weren't for the pain, I would have enjoyed it." Roisman even liked the food, which is served on china, although, like most Jewish patients, he didn't try the kosher meals. Beaumont serves some 2,000 kosher meals each year, ordering them from a Detroit distributor for an average of $6 per meal. Patients do not pay extra for the service. "The doctors were there every day, "