Northwell Health’s new CEO outlines top priorities
Dr. John D’Angelo succeeds longtime CEO Michael Dowling. He discusses the transition, the recent merger with Nuvance Health, and the system’s digital transformation.
For the first time in more than two decades, Northwell Health has a new leader.
Dr. John D’Angelo begins serving as president and CEO of the New York health system today. He succeeds Michael Dowling, who has led Northwell since 2002 and is moving into the role of CEO emeritus and will continue to advise the system.
While he takes a new role, D’Angelo is a familiar face at Northwell. He has spent more than 25 years in the system, beginning his career at Northwell as an emergency physician. Most recently, he served as executive vice president of the health system’s central region.
Now, D’Angelo is leading a system with 28 hospitals, over 1,000 care sites, more than 100,000 employees, and more than $22 billion in revenue.
In an interview with Chief Healthcare Executive®, D’Angelo expresses enthusiasm and appreciation for his new role. He cites his first priority as ensuring a smooth transition into the chief executive role.
But he also talks about the continued integration of Nuvance Health, which operates seven hospitals in New York and Connecticut. Northwell completed the acquisition of Nuvance in May, expanding the system’s footprint beyond New York.
He also is looking at the ongoing digital transformation of the hospital, and he says he recognizes the need to take care of Northwell’s staff.
D’Angelo says he wants to ensure that Northwell is “keeping the patient at the center of everything we do … but also keeping the people that take care of the patients as a high priority for us.”
He also makes it clear that Northwell’s mission goes beyond taking care of the medical needs of patients.
“I fully subscribe to what I think differentiates Northwell,” he says. “We really have been leaders in overall wellness and societal wellness.”
He points to addressing the social determinants of health, behavioral health, substance use disorder, and gun violence. Northwell holds an annual forum on gun violence.
“These are all critically important to overall health, and I think it's our responsibility to be at the forefront of those discussions. So that won't change,” he says.
(See part of our conversation in this video. The story continues below.)
Learning inside and out
Northwell’s board selected D’Angelo after evaluating candidates from inside and outside the organization. Dowling says he has been talking regularly with D’Angelo, and says that he’s well prepared to lead the system.
“He's been in the system a long time, and he's had major leadership roles in the health system, and so we've worked together for all of those years,” Dowling says. “I obviously wanted to make sure that we had an inside person to succeed me, because I'm a big believer that bringing an outside person can cause more trouble than the alternative.”
D’Angelo says he has been preparing for the role, and part of that work has included talking with people across the organization.
“I've been learning, listening,” D’Angelo says. “Even though I've been here for 25 years, you’ve got to get out there asking people, with different perspectives, what's working? What do we need to protect? What do we need to change?”
D’Angelo says he’s also been picking Dowling’s brain on dealing with important players outside of the organization. Dowling has been helping D’Angelo build relationships.
“I feel I am kind of an expert on Northwell and all the inner workings of Northwell and the operations of Northwell, and the people at Northwell,” he says. “I've been really trying to learn from him a lot of the external environment, and a lot of the key stakeholders. He's well in tune to a lot of the regulatory side and the policymakers.”
D’Angelo says he’s committed to ensuring a smooth transition as CEO. There are some leaders who are retiring, and D’Angelo has been working to fill some positions.
He also says that he is “rethinking what that team looks like, competencies, how we operate, and what's the overall operating model of the leadership structure in the organization.”
After 23 years, Michael Dowling, left, has stepped down as Northwell Health's president and CEO. He stands with his successor, Dr. John D'Angelo, who takes over as CEO today. D'Angelo has been with Northwell for 25 years.
Integrating Nuvance
Northwell is in the midst of integrating Nuvance Health, which operates hospitals and healthcare locations in western Connecticut and New York’s Hudson Valley.
Nuvance had been struggling financially, and Northwell has pledged to invest significantly to upgrade the system’s properties and technology. The system has more than 15,000 employees.
D’Angelo says the Nuvance acquisition “expanded our geography dramatically, and brings us, for the first time, into another state on the hospital side of the business, and brings us into more rural areas than we're used to.”
“It's a great fit for us as an organization, but it's got to be successful,” he says. “And so that's a high priority for me.”
The integration of Nuvance into Northwell is also spurring D’Angelo to think about the leadership group and how it functions, to determine what should be centralized and what should be market-based.
‘Leveraging technology’
D’Angelo is keenly focused on Northwell Health’s digital transformation, including the adoption of Epic’s electronic health records system.
He’s also anxious to see Northwell tap more digital tools.
“I'm a big data, tech kind of person,” D’Angelo says. “I’ve driven a lot of innovation inside the organization. I really have a big passion for how we differentiate ourselves, leveraging technology on the consumer and the patient side, the outcome side, workforce side.”
“I want to really still focus on where we need to lead in innovation and transformation on the digital side into the future,” he says.
D’Angelo is anxious to use digital tools to ease headaches for Northwell’s doctors and nurses.
“You hear about burnout in healthcare workers,” D’Angelo says. “The main driver of that is really the fact that they spend a lot of time doing things that are not what they are trained to do. There's a lot of administrative work that I hope the technology and AI could help relieve them of so they can do what they came into medicine for, which is interacting and helping deliver care to patients.”
Dr. John D'Angelo, the new president and CEO of Northwell Health, began his career with the New York system as an emergency physician.
Lessons from emergency medicine
As a physician with experience in emergency medicine, D’Angelo says he recognizes the importance of maintaining the health of Northwell’s clinicians.
“You lead through connecting people to purpose,” D’Angelo says. “You really rally everyone around the commitment, around why we're here.”
D’Angelo says connecting staff to their mission can help people stay energized and empathetic.
“You're constantly reminding people and celebrating the purpose of why we're really here, which is we're here to serve others and make people's lives better and have a positive impact on people,” he says. “I think that's the secret sauce. So in my mind, that's the playbook that we're going to stick with and not lose sight of.”
When asked how his experience in emergency medicine informs his approach to leadership, D’Angelo says his background has shown him that every member of the care team is invaluable.
“I learned very early in emergency medicine that this really, truly is a team sport, and the best physicians and the best providers are the ones that recognize that,” he says.
That teamwork is necessary in the fast-paced world of emergency medicine.
“You're multitasking high volume, but also varying levels of acuity, and you're really navigating uncertainty day to day,” he says. “That codependence on each other is an important aspect.”
Emergency medicine also provides training in dealing with the unexpected, which also is useful for a leader.
“It teaches you to navigate uncertainty, be willing to make decisions, maybe when you don't have all the information you'd like to have,” D’Angelo says.
‘It's that balancing act of knowing when to act, when not to act, when to lead with your gut,” he adds. “You have to be decisive, and when you do make decisions, how to observe the outcomes of those decisions and be willing to pivot, and ultimately to navigate towards the outcome you're trying to drive. You learn a lot in the emergency department, and that has stuck with me from a leadership perspective.”
D’Angelo relied heavily on that experience during the COVID-19 pandemic, when he played a leading role in the system’s response. New York was the epicenter of the pandemic in early 2020, and Northwell treated 300,000 Covid patients.
He thinks that work in the pandemic, dealing with unprecedented threats and improvising routinely, played a role in getting the opportunity to lead Northwell.
“There was no better display of having to have that comfort with leading through uncertainty, and navigating uncertainty and making decisions and not having all the data and the information always changing, and really complex multitasking and organizational, minute-by-minute decision making than the pandemic. And that was, in my mind, a real pivot point in my career,” he says.
Coming tomorrow: How Northwell Health will respond to federal funding challenges
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