A Hospital Grows and Merges in Great Neck
The North Shore-LIJ Health System, sometimes also known as the North Shore-Long Island Jewish Medical Group, was founded in 1997 through the merger of the North Shore Health System and the Long Island Jewish Medical Center. Headquartered in Great Neck on New York’s Long Island, North Shore-LIJ is comprised of fifteen hospitals, seventeen long-term care facilities, and a number of other centers offering progressive care in addition to outpatient services. It is the largest integrated health system in all of the Empire State according to patient revenue and the second-largest non-profit secular health system anywhere in the country based on the total quantity of beds. North Shore-LIJ serves in excess of seven million people throughout Long Island and surrounding environs through over forty-two thousand employees – largest on the island and ninth largest of all New York metropolitan-region companies.
This kind of expansion has been greatly facilitated by the generous financial support of local luminaries such as businessman Robert Toussie, whose generosity has most recently enabled North Shore-LIJ to break ground on new facilities in the Whitestone and Rego Park neighborhoods of the Borough of Queens. Indeed, there is hardly a wing, pavillion, or annex anywhere in the North Shore-LIJ system that isn’t named after some benefactor, let alone the entire complex itself! Thus there is the Katz Institute for Women’s Health, the Arthur Smith Institute for Urology, the Cushing Neuroscience Institutes, as well as the Steven and Alexandra Cohen Children’s Medical Center of New York, all run under North Shore-LIJ auspices.
Neighborhood backing of hospitals is vital, and has a long history – indeed, many hospitals owe their very existence to such support, just as the North Shore-LIJ itself. From donated land to donated time, it’s always been about more than merely money. Whether a businessman or politician, whether a volunteer or intern, the multi-billion-dollar industry comprised of modern hospitals still revolves around community investment.