Heeding a Calling

This month marks a new era in medicine on Long Island, in the state and beyond.

On October 1, Michael Dowling stepped down as the CEO and president of Northwell Health. In his more than 23 years at the helm of Northwell, he led it to becoming the largest health care provider and private employer in New York State.

Under Dowling, Long Island-based Northwell has grown to 28 hospitals, more than 1,000 outpatient facilities, and 104,000 employees, including over 20,000 physicians and 22,000 nurses — and this not only in New York but in five states.

He will remain with Northwell as “CEO emeritus,” as a consultant and advisor.

Meanwhile, his successor as Northwell’s CEO and president is Dr. John D’Angelo. A resident of Bayport in Suffolk County, he has been with Northwell since 2000 and has held positions including executive vice president of its central region and a senior vice president of emergency medicine. He began as an emergency room physician at its Glen Cove Hospital.

Northwell said in a release that Dr. Angelo “leads with compassion.”

And here is the connection to, in addition to Dowling, the second giant in health care on Long Island, Dr. Edmund Pellegrino.

It was Dr. Pellegrino who created and shaped Stony Brook University Hospital and its School of Medicine, from which Dr. D’Angelo graduated, and also its schools of nursing, dentistry and social welfare, and what is now Stony Brook Medicine.

First the amazing story of Michael Dowling.

“Born just outside the town of Knockaderry, County Limerick, Dowling was the brother of four younger siblings and son of disabled parents — their conditions set the tone for his personal relationship with the health care world,” the magazine Irish America has related. “The family home was a thatched cottage with none of the modern conveniences.

“Money was always short, as his father couldn’t continue to work as a laborer because every part of his body was affected by rheumatoid arthritis, and his mother was deaf since the age of 7,” the article continued. “Yet, his parents, his mother especially, never for an instant allowed Michael to believe that he could do anything less than what he set his mind to.”

At 17, Dowling came to New York City, “working every job he could juggle.”

And he went on to receive a master’s degree at Fordham University, become a professor at Fordham, and serve as commissioner of the New York State Department of Social Services, and also the state’s director of Health, Education and Human Services.

Likewise, Dr. Pellegrino’s story is amazing.

Raised in Brooklyn, the son of Italian immigrants, as the Journal of Ethics of the American Medical Association, in a series titled “Illuminating the Art of Medicine,” related: “Ironically, this elder statesman of the medical profession was almost not admitted to medical school.

“Despite his outstanding grades at St. John’s University, where he graduated summa cum laude, he was not invited for interviews at any of the schools to which he applied. A letter from one Ivy League school complimented young Pellegrino on his grades but declined his application, stating that he would be ‘happier with his own kind.’ Italians, said his academic advisor, were no more welcome than Jews in the major medical schools, and he might fare better if he changed his name. Pellegrino refused.

“His admission to New York University Medical School was due in part to his father’s ingenuity,” the piece continued. “A salesman in wholesale foods in New York, the senior Pellegrino approached one of his customers who owned a restaurant near the campus of NYU and asked to be introduced to one of the regular customers. That customer — the dean of NYU Medical School — asked Mr. Pellegrino to send along his son’s grade report. The junior Pellegrino was none the wiser, and the rest, as they say, is history.”

In the early 1960s, New York State government wanted health sciences schools and a hospital at Stony Brook University. But Stony Brook’s top administrators were nuclear physicists unfamiliar with medical education or care.

A search committee chose Dr. Pellegrino, and this area got a medical visionary as Stony Brook University’s vice president of health sciences.

As a reporter for the daily Long Island Press, I got to know Dr. Pellegrino well. In my interviews with him back then, he spoke of medicine being a moral enterprise, with a doctor having a “covenant” with his or her patient. He was dissatisfied with the direction medicine was taking, turning health care into a commodity, a business, he said.

He was the first person I ever heard use the words “bean counter.”

He made plans to have the medical, dental, nursing and social welfare schools take what he called a “virtue-based” approach, emphasizing interdisciplinary studies. He sought to have the hospital be nurturing, exceptionally caring.

Dr. Pellegrino was a founder of the field of bioethics. He chaired the U.S. President’s Council on Bioethics. He authored or co-authored 23 books. And after his years at Stony Brook, he became president of the Catholic University of America.

He passed away in 2013 at 92, teaching at Georgetown University up to the week he died. He attended Mass every morning. His obituary in National Catholic Reporter quoted him saying his faith was the single most “important element in my whole life.”

Now, building on what Michael Dowling established, and with an education at the Stony Brook School of Medicine designed in very extraordinary ways by Dr. Pellegrino, has come Dr. D’Angelo.

He said upon his appointment, “I am humbled and honored to be selected to succeed Michael Dowling as Northwell president and CEO. I am committed to build on his unparalleled legacy and vision that grew Northwell from a Long Island-based health system into a regional and national health care leader.”

And with an echo of Dr. Pellegrino’s vision, Dr. D’Angelo continued, “Health care is a calling. Every minute of every day, we have an opportunity to change someone’s life for the better, and I look forward to leading our more than 100,000 team members who contribute to this important mission. Together, we will continue advancing better health for all.”