Board Approves Appointment of Mitchell Katz, MD, to Head NYC Health + Hospitals
Sep 29, 2017
Following the nomination by Mayor Bill de Blasio, the NYC Health + Hospitals Board of Directors today voted and approved Mitchell Katz, MD, as the health system’s next President and Chief Executive Officer. Dr. Katz will assume his new role in the coming months.
“The Board of Directors is extremely pleased about the important appointment of Dr. Mitchell Katz,” said Gordon J. Campbell, acting chair of the board of NYC Health + Hospitals. “Our vote wasn’t just unanimous; it was enthusiastically unanimous! Dr. Katz is the right person to lead America’s largest and greatest public health system into the future.”
“I sleep easier knowing that our essential public health care system is in the hands of someone who knows health care from a provider perspective, understands the necessity of transforming health care delivery, and has remarkably invaluable experience moving another public health system in a very positive direction,” said Stanley Brezenoff, interim president and chief executive officer. “Our mission is important in ways beyond the direct care provided to more than a million New Yorkers, and he gets it.”
“I’m honored to be entrusted with the leadership of an organization that plays such a vital role for so many New Yorkers,” said Dr. Katz. “I plan to approach my new role with the commitment and passion needed to bring people together to make a real difference.”
Dr. Katz comes to NYC Health + Hospitals from the Los Angeles County Health Agency, where he serves as director. For five years he served as the Director of the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services, the second largest public safety net system in the United States, during which he created the ambulatory care network and empaneled over 350,000 patients to a primary care home. He continues to see patients every week as an outpatient physician. Earlier, he was the director and health officer of the San Francisco Department of Health for 13 years, best known for funding needle exchange, creating Healthy San Francisco, outlawing the sale of tobacco at pharmacies, and winning ballot measures for rebuilding Laguna Honda Hospital and San Francisco General Hospital.
He is a graduate of Yale College and Harvard Medical School, he completed an internal medicine residency at UCSF Medical School, and he was an RWJ Clinical Scholar. He is the Deputy Editor of JAMA Internal Medicine, an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences (previously the Institute of Medicine) and the recipient of the Los Angeles County Medical Association 2015 Healthcare Champion of the year.