Interfaith Medical Center was formed on December 31, 1982 with the merger of two large, previously independent hospitals, the Brooklyn Jewish Hospital and Medical Center in Crown Heights and St. John's Episcopal Hospital in Bedford-Stuyvesant.
St. John's Episcopal Hospital
The official date for the dedication and incorporation of the St. John's Episcopal Hospital are unknown. The best documentation dates St. John's Episcopal Hospital's services to the mid-19th century. The Episcopal Diocese of Long Island established the St. John's Episcopal Home for the Aged and the Blind on Herkimer Street in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn.
The Jewish Hospital of Brooklyn opened as a small dispensary at 70 Johnson Street in 1895. Originally the Jewish Hospital Society of Brooklyn, the dispensary grew to serve the burgeoning populations of Crown Heights and Prospect Heights. On December 9, 1906, the society dedicated the Jewish Hospital of Brooklyn. By the 1950s, it had grown to be one of the largest and best hospital complexes in Brooklyn. In addition to the main building, which faced Classon Avenue, the hospital had a nursing school and residence and several adjoining pavilions, wings and clinics, the last of which seem to date from the 1950s. In December 1948, Dr. Rudolph Nissen, a hospital surgeon, famous for developing a widely used operation to prevent esophageal reflux, performed an exploratory laparotomy on Albert Einstein at the hospital.
Merger
St. John's Episcopal and Brooklyn Jewish Hospital both grew during the first half of the 20th century. At the heights of their successes, they were the largest employers in Central Brooklyn. However, after World War II, the population of the neighborhood began to change. The affluent residents began to decamp to the suburbs and were replaced by a less wealthy population. The patients in the area began to become more reliant on Medicare and Medicaid, and these government programs paid less than private health insurers. As a result, the both hospitals became increasingly financially unstable. Brooklyn Jewish Hospital declared bankruptcy in 1979. It received federal protection, was able to reorganize, and its operations continued until 1982. Although St. John's did not declare bankruptcy, its finances nevertheless became increasingly precarious. To save the two hospitals, a merger was completed in December 1982. The combined entity was called Interfaith Medical Center. After the merger, Interfaith continued to struggle financially. In 1985, its medical residents went on a two-week strike over disputed wages and long hours of work.
Offerings in behavioral health are a mainstay of Interfaith's medical services. The medical center provides a wide array of outpatient, inpatient and emergency behavioral health, psychiatric, detoxification, and drug rehabilitation programs. The hospital also assists patients in entering housing and outpatient chemical dependency programs.
This center provides numerous outpatient services. The facility consists of 34 outpatient clinics in general medicine and a wide range of other specialties and subspecialties.
AIDS Treatment Center
Interfaith provides federally supported care and treatment services in their AIDS Treatment Center.
Hospital rating data
The HealthGrades website contains the clinical quality data for Interfaith Medical Center, as of 2017. For this rating section three different types of data from HealthGrades are presented: clinical quality ratings for thirteen inpatient conditions and procedures, twelve patient safety indicators and the percentage of patients giving the hospital as a 9 or 10. For inpatient conditions and procedures, there are three possible ratings: worse than expected, as expected, better than expected. For this hospital the data for this category is:
Worse than expected – 7
As expected – 5
Better than expected – 1
For patient safety indicators, there are the same three possible ratings. For this hospital safety indicators were rated as:
Worse than expected – 4
As expected – 7
Better than expected – 1
Percentage of patients rating this hospital as a 9 or 10 – 52% Percentage of patients who on average rank hospitals as a 9 or 10 – 69%
