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Merger Arenas / 107 become the biggest in new york City and one of the country’s largest, training over 1,600 physicians and graduate students annually and having more than 2,200 hospital beds with an occupancy of about 676,000 patient days (lagnado and Winslow 1996). nyu and mt. sinai, like new york and presbyterian, were responding to the fierce competitive and financial pressures in the new york area’s health care market, which, like other metropolitan areas, had a great excess of patient beds and of medical school slots (lagnado 1996). Officials of nyu and mt. sinai declared that the merger was being undertaken with the expectation that “with the combined power, prestige, philanthropic backing, research capabilities and patient flow of two of the city’s most financially robust hospitals, . . . such a commanding presence would be created both locally and nationally that they would be able to increase revenues by drawing more paying customers . . . [and thereby] keep [their] medical research alive” (Fein 1996:1). When the intent to merge was approved, the boards and senior leaders of nyu and mt. sinai realized that many details would have to be worked out through a process of negotiation. the most complicated decisions involved the medical school: where its campus would be located, who would be in charge administratively and academically, what would be the lines of authority and responsibility for curriculum development, and which departments should be consolidated. in the familiar effort to achieve some semblance of parity, the merger planners agreed that the new hospital corporation would be called mt. sinai–nyu and the medical school would be named nyu–mt. sinai and be part of new york university, with the dean chosen by the president of nyu and the board split equally between trustees of the two predecessor schools. Although the trustees and senior officials of nyu and mt. sinai lauded their merger, the faculty of the two organizations had a very different assessment of the proposed union. eight months after its approval by the medical centers’ boards, the two institutions issued a terse joint announcement on February 14, 1997—ironically, on valentine’s Day—that the planned merger had been terminated (Fein 1997; Foubister 1997a). One fundamental element in the merger’s collapse reportedly was mt. sinai’s expectation “that the . . . school would be an independent entity involving equal partnership between the two sides,” with degrees granted by nyu without the school being “an integral part of its university.” nyu faculty, on the other hand, “expecting nyu control of the combined med school, insisted that the core curriculum of the first two years . . . be taught at their campus” (lagnado 1997: A8). there were other unresolved issues as well, including the school’s departmental structure, tenure, and even arguments about “how the minutes of their merger meetings would be kept.” As reporter lucette lagnado observed, “Any semblance of a cooperative spirit vanished as each side came to see this as a zero-sum game, a fight for survival ” (lagnado 1997: A8). 108 / Chapter 5 the decision to cancel the merger reportedly was initiated by nyu. in addition to dissension about the medical school, finances proved to be a tipping factor that persuaded the university’s trustees not to forge ahead. After the joint announcement of the merger’s dissolution, relieved department chairs at nyu medical Center met with their provost and dean, Dr. saul Farber. One department head “asked a question that was on everyone’s mind: ‘saul, is this now truly dead—with a stake through its heart?’ Dean Farber gave the answer many yearned to hear: ‘yes, it is’” (lagadno 1997: A8). Farber’s definitive statement turned out to be an inaccurate one, at least with respect to the teaching hospitals. to their consternation, nyu’s medical school faculty learned in september 1997 that the rumors that had been circulating for several months were true: the trustees of the two medical centers had resumed merger discussions, in the words of an nyu physician, “secretly, without our knowledge, without our input,” and had agreed to merge their hospitals by January 1, 1998 (Foubister 1997b: 1). A group of senior nyu faculty reacted to the new merger plans by organizing a Committee of Concerned Faculty—akin to the mCp-Hahnemann faculty’s action in summer 1998 when they formed the Committee to save the university after AHerF declared bankruptcy. By the beginning of October 1997, the nyu committee had raised funds to pay for a legal challenge if...

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