NYC Health + Hospitals Board Approves Four Appointments to Join Dr. Mitchell Katz’s Leadership Team
Positions focus on prevention, wellness, and disease management
Dec 21, 2017
At the request of Dr. Mitchell Katz, who will take over as President and CEO of NYC Health + Hospitals in January, the health system Board of Directors today approved the appointments of four senior leaders. Three will join NYC Health + Hospitals from other parts of the country, and one assumes the formal position he has been serving on an interim basis.
Matthew Siegler joins NYC Health + Hospitals as Senior Vice President for Managed Care, a newly created position. In this role, he will develop and implement NYC Health + Hospitals’ patient and revenue growth strategies, with a principal focus on managed care market share and external payer and provider relationships. Mr. Siegler comes from Kaiser Foundation Health Plan, Inc., the national health plan arm of Kaiser Permanente, where he led key strategic and advocacy efforts across Kaiser Permanente ‘s commercial and government business, with a focus on public exchanges, large national employer groups, and leading planning for and response to federal efforts to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act. Earlier, Mr. Siegler served in the Obama Administration as an operational, policy, and communications leader on the staff of the White House Domestic Policy Council. He has also served on the staff of Congressman Henry Waxman, the House Energy and Commerce Committee, and the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. He is a graduate of Harvard Law School, Johns Hopkins University, and Harvard College.
Eric Wei, MD, MBA, joins NYC Health + Hospitals as Chief Quality Officer, another newly created position. In the role, Dr. Wei will direct and oversee clinical performance, patient safety, clinical analytics, informatics, and quality programs to meet established quality, safety, access, regulatory, and compliance goals. Dr. Wei comes from Los Angeles County and USC Medical Center, where he serves as Interim Chief Quality Officer and Associate Medical Director for Quality, Safety, and Risk. He is also Assistant Professor of Clinical Emergency Medicine at the Keck School of Medicine of University of Southern California. He is a fellow of the American College of Emergency Physicians and the American Academy of Emergency Medicine. Dr. Wei received his bachelor’s degree in molecular, cell, and developmental biology at University of California, Los Angeles, and completed a combined MD and MBA program at University of California, Irvine.
Theodore Long, MD, MHS, joins New York City’s public health system as Vice President for Primary Care, a third new position approved by the board. In the role, Dr. Long will develop a comprehensive business plan to transform the health system’s current portfolio of primary care services into an integrated, high-quality, and profitable line of business delivering a great patient experience and better health in a timely and cost-effective manner. He is currently the Senior Medical Officer for the Quality Measurement and Value-Based Incentives Group at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which covers over 20 federal programs including the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act of 2015 (MACRA), the Hospital Readmission Reduction Program, and the Hospital Value-Based Purchasing Program. Earlier, he served as Medical Director at the Rhode Island State Department of Health. He is a practicing primary care physician who did his undergraduate work, residency training, and post-graduate master’s work in health services research at Yale University. He is on the faculty of the Yale School of Medicine, where he teaches about health policy and administration. He is also on the faculty at the Harvard Medical School Center for Primary Care.
Israel Rocha, who has served as Chief Executive Officer of NYC Health + Hospitals/Elmhurst since July 2016, will concurrently serve as Vice President for OneCity Health, a subsidiary of NYC Health + Hospitals focused on population health, care management, and implementation of the State’s Delivery System Reform Incentive Payment (DSRIP) program. Mr. Rocha has been serving as interim leader of OneCity Health since November. Before joining NYC Health + Hospitals, he was the Chief Executive Officer of Doctors Hospital at Renaissance, a 513-bed facility in Edinburg, Texas, where he led key initiatives that helped the hospital transition from a general acute-care hospital into a comprehensive medical and teaching center. Earlier, he worked for 10 years in the U.S. House of Representatives. Mr. Rocha graduated from Columbia University.
“We are pleased that these four highly talented individuals are joining NYC Health + Hospitals to help advance priorities at the core of our mission, including the delivery of exceptional patient care,” said Gordon Campbell, Acting Chair of the Board of Directors.
“These appointments are the result of many weeks of collaborative work with the health system’s next President and CEO, Dr. Mitchell Katz,” said Stanley Brezenoff, Interim President and CEO of NYC Health + Hospitals. “These new appointments will allow NYC Health + Hospitals to progress further along its transformational path.”
“These new leaders will fill critical leadership gaps and better position us to meet the challenges ahead,” said Dr. Katz. “I am fortunate to come into my new role with their talents and past experience as an invaluable resource, complementing the wealth of talented women and men who already make NYC Health + Hospitals an essential health system for New Yorkers.”