New York Medical College (NYMC) was endowed with $3 million to establish a professorship and chair in the Department of Rehabilitation Medicine at NYC Health + Hospitals/Metropolitan. According to the college, the endowment will foster research and support the training of medical students and residents.
The estate of Catherine Hinterbuchner is the benefactor of the gift. Hinterbuchner was a physiatrist who passed away in 2015. She served as chair of NYMC”™s Department of Rehabilitation Medicine from 1971 to 2004.
“I met Dr. Hinterbuchner in 2012,” said Edward C. Halperin, chancellor and CEO at NYMC. “She was a force of nature and deeply devoted to assuring the long-term development of the medical specialty of rehabilitation medicine in order to improve the quality and quantity of the lives of future generations of patients.”
The Department of Rehabilitation Medicine has 12 full-time faculty members, primarily based at Metropolitan in Harlem.
Eduardo Lopez was selected as the inaugural Hinterbuchner professor and chair. Lopez joined the faculty of NYMC and Metropolitan as chairman and chief of service of the Department Rehabilitation Medicine in 2012.
“Dr. Lopez has admirably overseen a rehabilitation medicine department that serves our patients with disabilities on an inpatient and outpatient basis,” said Alina Moran, CEO of NYC Health + Hospitals/Metropolitan. “Under his leadership, the Department of Rehabilitation Medicine also serves as the primary site of academic clinical training for the NYMC rehabilitation residency program and the NYMC School of Medicine students.”
Metropolitan has been affiliated with NYMC since its founding in 1875, representing the oldest partnership between a hospital and a private medical school in the country.
