Cedars-Sinai Medical Center
Cedars-Sinai Medical Center is a nonprofit, tertiary, 915-bed teaching hospital and multi-specialty academic health science center located in Los Angeles, California.[1][2][3][4] Part of the Cedars-Sinai Health System, the hospital has a staff of over 2,000 physicians and 10,000 employees,[5][6] supported by a team of 2,000 volunteers and more than 40 community groups.[7] As of 2022–23, U.S. News & World Report ranked Cedars-Sinai among the top performing hospitals in the western United States.[8][9] Cedars-Sinai is a teaching hospital affiliate of David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), which was ranked in the top 20 on the U.S. News 2023 Best Medical Schools: Research.[10]
Cedars-Sinai Medical Center
Cedars-Sinai focuses on biomedical research and technologically advanced medical education based on an interdisciplinary collaboration between physicians and clinical researchers.[11] The academic enterprise at Cedars-Sinai has research centers covering cardiovascular, genetics, gene therapy, gastroenterology, neuroscience, immunology, surgery, organ transplantation, stem cells, biomedical imaging, and cancer, with more than 500 clinical trials and 900 research projects currently underway (led by 230 principal investigators).[12][13]
Certified as a level I trauma center for adults and pediatrics, Cedars-Sinai trauma-related services range from prevention to rehabilitation and are provided in concert with the hospital's Department of Surgery.[14] Named after the Cedars of Lebanon and Mount Sinai, Cedars-Sinai's patient care is depicted in the Jewish Contributions to Medicine mural located in the Harvey Morse Auditorium.[15]
Cedars-Sinai is one of the leading institutes for competitive research funding from the National Institutes of Health. As an international leader in biomedical research, it translates discoveries into successful treatments with global impact.[49] Cedars-Sinai investigators pair basic scientific research in areas of stem cell biology, immunology, neuroscience and genetics, with clinical and translational discoveries, to continue advancing medical breakthroughs.[49] Total research expenditure in 2020–21 was $252 million.[50] In fiscal year 2021, Cedars-Sinai received $93 million in funding from the National Institutes of Health.[51]
Some notable research areas and organized research units at Cedars-Sinai are:[52]
The Cedars-Sinai Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences (formerly known as the Cedars-Sinai's Graduate Research Education division), established in 2008, is a graduate college at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. It offers PhD and Masters programs in Biomedical Sciences and healthcare fields.[53] There are more than 100 faculty, and over 150 enrollment; the Dean is Shlomo Melmed, MB, ChB, FRCP, MACP.[54]
The school offers programs at the Masters and Doctoral levels. Didactic lectures are conducted at the Pacific Design Center while research is conducted at the medical center, specifically at the Burns and Allen Research Institute (named for George Burns and his wife, Gracie Allen), which is located inside the Barbara and Marvin Davis Research Building on Cedars-Sinai campus.[28] Opened in 1996, it houses biomedical research aimed at discovering genetic, molecular and immunological factors that trigger disease.[29][55][31][32][33] In 2013 new research labs were created, when Cedars-Sinai opened its 800,000-square-foot Advanced Health Sciences Pavilion, which consists of eight stories of program space located over a six-story parking structure, on the eastern edge of its campus at the corner of San Vicente Boulevard and Gracie Allen Drive. Designed by the architectural firm Hellmuth, Obata and Kassabaum, the pavilion brings patient care and translational research together in one site. The Advanced Health Sciences Pavilion houses the Cedars-Sinai's neurosciences programs, the Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute and Regenerative Medicine Institute laboratories, as well as outpatient surgery suites, an imaging area, and an education center.[36][37][38][39][40][41][42][43][44]
PhD Program:
Masters Programs:
Professional Training Programs:
Controversy[edit]
In 2008, state regulators found that Cedars-Sinai had placed the Quaid twins and others in immediate jeopardy by its improper handling of blood-thinning medication.[63]
According to articles in the Los Angeles Times in 2009, Cedars-Sinai was under investigation for significant radiation overdoses of 206 patients during CT brain perfusion scans during an 18-month period.[64][65] Since the initial investigation, it was found that GE sold several products to various medical centers with faulty radiation monitoring devices.
In 2011, Cedars-Sinai again created controversy by denying a liver transplant to medical marijuana patient Norman Smith. They removed Mr. Smith from a transplant waiting list for "non-compliance of our substance abuse contract",[66] despite his own oncologist at Cedars-Sinai having recommended that he use the marijuana for his pain and chemotherapy.[67] Dr. Steven D. Colquhoun, director of the Liver Transplant Program, said that the hospital "must consider issues of substance abuse seriously", but the transplant center did not seriously consider whether Mr. Smith was "using" marijuana versus "abusing" it.[68] In 2012, Cedars-Sinai denied a liver transplant to a second patient, Toni Trujillo, after her Cedars-Sinai doctors knew and approved of her legal use of medical marijuana. In both cases, the patients acceded to the hospital's demand and stopped using medical marijuana, despite its therapeutic benefits for them, but were both sent back to the bottom of the transplant list.[69][70] Smith's death inspired Americans for Safe Access to lobby for the California Medical Cannabis Organ Transplant Act (AB 258), which was enacted in July 2015 to protect future patients from dying at the hands of medical establishments prejudiced against the legal use of medical cannabis.[71]
Patient data security breaches[edit]
On June 18 through June 24, 2013, six employees were terminated for inappropriately accessing 14 patient records around the time Kim Kardashian and Kanye West's daughter was born at the hospital.[72] On June 23, 2014, an unencrypted employee laptop was stolen from an employee's home. The laptop contained patient Social Security numbers and patient health data.[73]
Art collection[edit]
First developed by philanthropists Frederick and Marcia Weisman, Cedars-Sinai's modern and contemporary art collection dates to 1976 and includes more than 4,000 original paintings, sculptures, new media installations and limited-edition prints by the likes of Andy Warhol, Robert Rauschenberg, Richard Diebenkorn, Sam Francis, Claes Oldenburg, Willem de Kooning, Raymond Pettibon and Pablo Picasso. At any given time, 90 to 95 percent of the collection is on display. Nine large-scale works are located in courtyards, parking lots and public walkways throughout the approximately 30-acre campus. The collection consists entirely of gifts from donors, other institutions and occasionally the artists themselves.[74]
There is a statue of Moses in the parking lot. However the two tablets of the covenant that, according to the story, Moses received at Mount Sinai, are blank on the statue. This led many people to ask, "why is Moses in the parking lot?" In response, the director of community engagement, Jonathan Schreiber, has given a brief lecture explaining the history of the statues role in the hospital merger.[75]
