Northwell Health CEO Michael Dowling stepping down, to be replaced by Executive VP John D'Angelo

Michael Dowling, the CEO who helped transform Northwell Health into the state’s largest health system and led it through the COVID-19 pandemic, is stepping down after 23 years at the helm, officials announced Wednesday morning.

John D’Angelo, the current executive vice president of the health system’s central region, will take over in October. Dowling will continue as an adviser at Northwell with the title CEO emeritus.

Dowling said he told Northwell's board of directors about two years ago that he expected to be leaving the top position and wanted to help create a smooth transition to new leadership.

"It's not an easy decision, as you can imagine, to decide to step aside," Dowling, 75, told Newsday in a phone interview on Wednesday. "I've always been one who believes that for the good of the organization, you pick the time, step aside, and pass the baton to somebody you really trust and believe in."

 Dowling said he had worked with D'Angelo for 20 years.

"He is the person that I think is the right person for the organization," Dowling said.

Dowling started with the North Shore Health System in 1995, anchored by North Shore University Hospital in Manhasset. Two years later, he oversaw its merger with longtime competitor Long Island Jewish Medical Center in New Hyde Park, creating the North Shore-Long Island Jewish Health System.

The system was renamed Northwell Health in 2016 and now includes 28 hospitals across New York and Connecticut, most on Long Island, employing 104,000 people.

They include Huntington Hospital, South Shore University Hospital in Bay Shore and Peconic Bay Medical Center in Riverhead. It also operates Lenox Hill Hospital in Manhattan.

Many employees have called him a charismatic leader who brings energy into any room. But he has also survived clashes with the New York State Nurses Association over wages, staffing levels and benefits at various hospitals. During negotiations with South Shore University Hospital earlier this year, the union pointed to Dowling's $9 million salary and benefits package from 2023 as evidence Northwell can afford more nurses.

Northwell expanded outside New York for the first time a few weeks ago with the merger of Connecticut based-Nuvance Health. This move made them the largest not-for-profit health system in the Northeast, officials said.

During Dowling's tenure, Northwell opened the Zucker School of Medicine at Hofstra as well as the Hofstra Northwell School of Nursing and Physician Assistant Studies. The Feinstein Institutes, the health system's research arm, has expanded and is now getting ready to open a new center for bioelectronic medicine.

"Lots of great things occurred but it is all done by a team of people," Dowling said. "Nobody succeeds themselves."

Nassau-Suffolk Hospital Council president and CEO Wendy Darwell said Dowling's career "changed the landscape of health care in New York and beyond."

"He’s been a pioneer in the evolution of hospitals from single buildings to comprehensive health systems that integrate patient care across all provider types and bring care closer to the communities they serve," she said.

Rep. Thomas Suozzi (D-Glen Cove), called Dowling "a man of great compassion and a grounded, approachable figure."

Greater New York Hospital Association president Kenneth E. Raske said Dowling never lost his focus on compassion and caring for patients.

Raske recalled "the darkest days" of the pandemic, when Dowling was instrumental in building a temporary hospital space out of the Javits Convention Center in Manhattan that housed COVID-19 patients. According to Raske, he "did it from scratch and did it with a high degree of excellence."

Dowling has also been outspoken on the issue of gun violence, and has mobilized other health care CEOs to support legislation aiming to reduce it.

He will continue with Northwell for another two years but D'Angelo will take over the day-to-day operations.

"I'll be around," Dowling said. "It will give me a chance to focus on some things that I really want to focus on like mental health, educational leadership development ... this gives me the chance to talk about some of the national issues that I think are very important that people need to be speaking about."

Dowling said some of the health care policies coming out of the federal government are "potentially disastrous for health care."

"You can't obliterate science and discovery and hope that you can progress into the future," he said. "We are where we are today because of the science that has generated all these innovations in every area of health care that you can imagine over the last 50 years."

Dowling has referred to his journey from dockworker to health care CEO as the immigrant's classic American dream. He grew up in hardscrabble Knockaderry, a village in County Limerick, Ireland, in a home with a thatched roof and no electricity. Dowling came to the United States to work and save money for college, earning his undergraduate degree from University College Cork in Ireland and his master's from Fordham University in the Bronx.

He worked as a professor and administrator at Fordham University before spending 12 years in state government in the 1980s and '90s as state director of Health, Education and Human Services and commissioner of the state Department of Social Services.

Dowling and his wife, Kathleen, have two grown children. While they are happy he will have more free time, his family did not pressure him to retire.

"I work seven days a week and have been doing it forever," he said. "Now, maybe, we will have a little bit of time to take a vacation."