Mount Sinai Hospital has been treating doctors with big interest-free mortgages as incentives for staying on the staff, the New York Daily News reported.
The hospital’s Icahn School of Medicine, located at 1 Gustave Levy Place in the Upper East Side, has paid six- and seven-figure mortgages since 2008 to at least three esteemed physicians, records cited by the Daily News show. Oncologist Ron Hoffman received a $1 million mortgage without interest in 2008. The deal saves the Brooklyn condominium owner $5,368 a month, a mortgage adviser told the Daily News.
David Adams, a professor of cardiothoracic surgery, also received a $1 million loan, after buying a $4.8 million condo on the Upper East Side. He has made no payments on interest or the principal, tax documents show. Radiology professor Burton Drayer bought a home at 965 Fifth Avenue in 1997, with the hospital as his guarantor. Drayer received a $700,000 loan and sold it last year for $7.5 million.
Hospital spokesperson Dorie Klissas said the loan deals are legal given that they’re reported to the Internal Revenue Service and approved by the hospital board.
“The program is an important recruitment and retention tool in light of the extraordinarily high cost of housing in the New York metropolitan area,” Klissas told the Daily News. [NYDN] – Mark Maurer