Mount Sinai’s Internal Response to New York Magazine Article

From: Broadcast Notifications <BroadcastNotifications@mountsinai.org>
Date: Oct 14, 2019 5:21 PM
Subject: New York Magazine Story
To:
Cc:
TO:                 All Faculty, Staff, and Students

FROM:           Kenneth L. Davis, MD, President and Chief Executive Officer Mount Sinai Health System   

Dennis S. Charney, MD, Anne and Joel Ehrenkranz Dean, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, President for Academic Affairs, Mount Sinai Health System

DATE:           October 14, 2019

RE:                 New York Magazine Story

 

As you may have heard, New York Magazine recently published a feature-length story that focuses on a 2016 incident involving a former doctor that happened at The Mount Sinai Hospital. We want to take a moment to address some of the issues raised. 

 These are the facts: more than three years ago David Newman, a former doctor in The Mount Sinai Hospital’s Emergency Department, sexually assaulted one of our female patients. We took this rare and exceptionally upsetting situation extremely seriously and acted swiftly. We immediately terminated him, conducted a comprehensive internal investigation, and worked closely with the District Attorney’s office to bring him to justice. As a result, the judge sentenced him to prison for his horrific actions. 

 We are so sorry that our patient was subjected to this horrible act. No one should have to experience what she did. Patient safety is our top concern and Mount Sinai has absolutely zero tolerance for this type of behavior towards anyone. What occurred was abhorrent, and is in no way representative of the Mount Sinai community.

 The article makes sweeping and unfair generalizations and suggests that this three-year-old assault reflects Mount Sinai’s culture and values. This is simply not the case. We are proud of the many steps that we have already taken, but we also acknowledge that when it comes to equity, diversity, and inclusion, we, like most other institutions, still have work to do. And we will do it. We hold everyone in our community—regardless of position or status—to Mount Sinai’s core values of treating each patient and each other with the utmost dignity and respect.

 We anticipate that this article may elicit strong emotions in our community. How institutions respond in challenging moments is a reflection of their character. We must not allow this to polarize us or negate our accomplishments thus far and the hard work that is continuing. Let us join together. The health, well-being, and safety of all our patients, students, trainees, faculty, and staff, demands no less.

Plaintiffs’ Response to Mount Sinai - Medium.com

Firstly, we applaud Aja Newman for her courage to speak about her horrifying experience at Mount Sinai three years ago. Words cannot express how sorry and outraged we are that this happened — and inside an institution that we have all worked hard to build into a place of healing and human advancement. Aja, we are grateful for your voice and we stand with you.

While not directly comparable, we know that our experiences stem from a common foundation of structural violence against women and minorities. We know that if we do not speak out about the everyday acts of discrimination that are all but normalized in our culture, then heinous acts of violence like Aja experienced are given space to occur. And when we do speak and we are ignored, it is our responsibility to speak again and again, more and more loudly, until we are heard and action is taken.

We are eight current and past employees of Mount Sinai. In April 2019, we filed a lawsuit against Mount Sinai for gender, age, and race discrimination. We named Prabhjot Singh MD, Dennis Charney MD, Bruno Silva, David Berman and Mount Sinai Health Systems as defendants. When we filed our complaint, we knew we were risking a lot: our careers, our professional networks and our futures in healthcare and global health. Indeed, many of us have lost friends, professional contacts, employment opportunities, time, money, and our health through participating in this case.

Sadly, Mount Sinai has responded with little that will significantly change the environment, masking a devotion to the status quo behind a flurry of superficial activity. This response is particularly galling because Mount Sinai’s own community has asked for accountability. Earlier this year, between May 6–16, nearly 1,000 employees, students, residents, staff and alumni of Mount Sinai signed letters demanding action to address the discriminatory and damaging behaviors reported in our case.

Among the demands of the letters are the following: suspension of the accused from their roles, an independent investigation into the reports of discrimination and the broader “culture of harassment perpetuated by school leadership,” and the establishment of a secure, third-party platform to allow other employees to safely report similar offenses. To date, these demands have been ignored.

Months after our complaint was filed, Prabhjot Singh remains on Sinai’s payroll despite stepping down from his role as Director of the Arnhold Institute for Global Health–a face-saving exit that he portrayed as proof that the “attacks” against him had been shown to be false, accompanied by a statement of gratitude and support from Dean Charney. Bruno Silva has been promoted to a leadership position within the Institute, and given free rein to represent Mount Sinai at prestigious national forums, despite our reports of his aggressive verbal intimidation of female and minority employees. Dennis Charney remains free to broadcast institution-wide notifications claiming that the allegations in our complaint are unfounded, despite the conflict that should be apparent given his status as a defendant. Finally, neither Mount Sinai nor the Arnhold Institute for Global Health has responded to the serious ethical and academic concerns outlined in our lawsuit including misuse of funds, lack of compliance with IRB and HIPAA protocols and processes, and false reporting to donors.

In a recent internal email to all Mount Sinai Students, Faculty and Staff, Mount Sinai leaders responded to the New York magazine expose, stating, “We are so sorry that our patient was subjected to this horrible act. No one should have to experience what she did… What occurred was abhorrent, and is in no way representative of the Mount Sinai community.” However, they neglect to mention that “for more than three years, they have been fighting her in court, where she has brought a damages suit. The institution has cut ties with David Newman and deployed what might be called a “bad apple” defense — despite a finding by the U.S. Department of Health that members on Sinai’s staff had failed, at least twice, to report his activities up the chain of command, thus placing “all patients at risk”.” By stonewalling her in court, they have extended Aja’s trauma for longer than David Newman spent in prison for his crime. (Lisa Miller, New York, October 15 2019)

In the many months since we first brought our own complaints of mistreatment to Mount Sinai Human Resources, Mount Sinai leaders have trivialized our experiences in private and denied them in public. And they continue to blatantly ignore the voices of the students, trainees, employees, and alumni of the institution who are now demanding better.

It is clear that Mount Sinai leaders hope that our voices, our cases, and our collective demands for change, will simply fade away.

We are determined not to let this happen.

We will keep speaking. We care about Mount Sinai and want to see its people thrive and build an environment that is safe and equitable for all. But we cannot do this alone. Now is the time for every one of us in the Mount Sinai community to speak up — to tell the stories publicly that you have told us in private, to support each other to come forward with the truth, and to demand justice and accountability from our leaders.

This is our chance to make a change. We thank Aja, and we, the plaintiffs in this case, promise to continue to do our part. We hope that you will too.

Natasha Anushri Anandaraja

Holly Atkinson

Emilie Bruzelius

Mary Caliendo

Humale Khan

Geraldine Llames

Amanda Misiti

Stella Safo