Dr. Alan Wong named new chief medical officer of Mount Sinai South Nassau

As a teen, Alan Wong spent his afternoons volunteering in a neuroscience lab at Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan, helping to map serotonin pathways in the brains of mice.

Some 30 years later, Dr. Wong is back at Mount Sinai, this time as chief medical officer and senior vice president for medical affairs at Mount Sinai South Nassau in Oceanside, helping oversee 900 physicians. He takes over from Dr. Adhi Sharma, who was appointed in September as president of the hospital, which has a staff of 3,500.

Wong joins the 455-bed hospital in the midst of its $400 million construction program, including an expansion of its main facility in Oceanside and a $40 million Medical Arts Pavilion in Long Beach.

"It’s a really exciting time," he said. "We're extending the great care that's provided at Mount Sinai’s main campus."

Previously, Wong was vice president for patient safety, chief quality officer, and chair of internal medicine at Mercy Hospital in Rockville Centre.

Wong is board-certified in internal medicine, pulmonary medicine, critical care, neuro-critical care, and hospice and palliative care. He attended medical school at the New York Institute of Technology College of Osteopathic Medicine, where he also earned a master’s in business administration. He did his residency training and a fellowship in pulmonary and critical care at NYU Langone Hospital-Long Island in Mineola.

Wong said once he settles into his new leadership role, he plans to do occasional shifts in the intensive care unit.

Wong’s qualifications and personality "checked all the boxes" the hospital was seeking, Sharma said. He is "a very calm individual who is team-focused, mission-oriented and … would align very well with the culture here at Mount Sinai South Nassau," Sharma said.

Wong, 47, lives in Syosset with his children, ages 14 and 15. He grew up in New York City, the youngest of three children. His parents immigrated from Hong Kong; his father managed the kitchen of his uncle’s restaurant and his mother worked her way up from a typist to an assistant vice president at a major bank, he said.

He said he has fond memories of his time volunteering at Mount Sinai, where he did research for the competition now known as the Regeneron Science Talent Search as a student at the Bronx High School of Science.

But while he enjoyed research, he said, "I just felt that I was more a bedside person, interacting with patients was more my calling."

By Maura McDermott

maura.mcdermott@newsday.commauramcdermott

Maura McDermott is a reporter on the investigations desk. Since starting at Newsday in 2012, she has also covered real estate and the business of health care.