New York City Mayor Bill DeBlasio has nominated physician Mitchell Katz, an experienced public health leader in California, to be the next president and CEO of NYC Health+Hospitals. His appointment to the post is pending approval by the system's board of directors.
Katz will replace current CEO Stanley Brezenoff.
"I will leave this interim assignment knowing we are putting the future of this essential organization in very capable hands," Brezenoff said.
Katz was born and raised in Brooklyn but has spent the better part of his career in public health in California. He currently serves as the Director of the Los Angeles County Health Agency, a new agency that combined the city's Health Services, Public Health, and Mental Health departments into one organization with the goal of providing "more integrated care and programming within Los Angeles," DeBlasio's office said in a statement. The agency has a budget of $7 billion, 28,000 employees and numerous community partners.
[Also: NYC Health + Hospitals lays off 476 to stem financial bleeding]
Those figures are similar to what Katz will handle with NYC H+H, which has a $7.2 billion dollar budget, serves more than 1 million New Yorkers through 70-plus care locations and includes a workforce of more than 40,000.
The system has had a rough year, with more than 470 managment positions cut in June and an operating loss of $673.3 million by the end of the third quarter of fiscal 2017.
[Also: NYC Health + Hospitals adds $289 million revenue cycle system to Epic EHR]
For the past five years, Katz was the director of the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services, during which time he created their ambulatory care network and eliminated the agency's deficit "through increased revenues and decreased administrative expenses." His tenure also saw the implementation through new ACA funding of electronic health system Orchid, which is now in use in 90 percent of DHS clinical sites, the mayor's office said.
Before Los Angeles, Katz was the director and health officer of the San Francisco Department of Health for 13 years and is known for funding needle exchange, creating Healthy San Francisco and outlawing the tobacco sales at pharmacies.
Katz works as an outpatient physician at Edward R. Royal Comprehensive Health Center and sees patients on the inpatient medicine service at LAC+USC, Harbor-UCLA, and Olive View-UCLA Medical Centers.
He graduated from Yale College and Harvard Medical School, and completed his internal medicine residency at UCSF Medical School.
Twitter: @BethJSanborn
Email the writer: beth.sandborn@himssmedia.com