SUFFOLK CLOSEUP: Healthcare Giants

SUFFOLK CLOSEUP

By Karl Grossman

There’s been a revolution in healthcare in Suffolk County led by Michael Dowling, president and CEO of Northwell Health, and the late Dr. Edmund Pellegrino who as vice president of health sciences at Stony Brook University created what’s now Stony Brook Medicine.

Both are giant healthcare networks in Suffolk. 

Indeed, under Dowling, Northwell Health—with 21 hospitals and 85,000 employees (4,900 doctors and 18,900 nurses)—is the largest health care provider in New York State. It is also the largest private employer in the state. 

There are other health systems active in Suffolk County: NYU Langone Health, Catholic Health and in recent times Manhattan-based Hospital for Special Surgery established a facility in Suffolk.  

There is competition and choice.

It’s all a far cry from the situation when I began as a reporter here in the 1962. Indeed, among my earliest articles at the Babylon Town Leader was about a woman refused admittance to Lakeside Hospital in Copiague because she didn’t have medical insurance. She returned to her car — and died in it. Lakeside Hospital, which began as Nassau-Suffolk General Hospital in 1939 with 54 beds, is no more. 

The backgrounds of Dowling and Dr. Pellegrino are fascinating.

Dowling, who last year was named by the publication Model Healthcare as Number One on its list of the “100 Most Influential People in Healthcare” in the United States, grew up in Ireland under challenging conditions. As an extensive article in 2020 about him in the magazine Irish America related: “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 healthcare world.”

“The family home was a thatched cottage with none of the modern conveniences,” it continued. “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. 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.”

“America, it turned out, was indeed in the cards for Dowling’s future,” the piece went on. “While many took a narrow-minded view of his prospects (one local milk farmer went as far as to tell him to his face that he would never go to college), he defied their predictions by being the first members of his family to progress to third-level [higher] education, which began at the University College Cork in the fall of 1967,”

At 17, he went to New York City “working every job he could juggle at once to fund the entirety of his four-year undergraduate degree” at Fordham University. “He compiled experience loading cargo on the docks, working in the engine room of tour boats, plumbing, cleaning, and on construction sites, often working 120-hour weeks not only in order to pay his tuition, but to continue to support the family he missed across the sea, even paying for his siblings to attend college.”

He received a master’s degree in social policy from Fordham, where he also met the woman who would be his wife, Elizabeth, a nurse specializing in oncology. They have two children. Dowling became a professor of social policy at Fordham and assistant dean at its Graduate School of Social Services.

With Mario Cuomo’s election as New York governor, Dowling was offered a position in his administration. He served 12 years including as director of Health, Education and Human Services and commissioner of the state’s Department of Social Services. Then he became senior vice president of Empire Blue Cross/Blue Shield. 

In 1995, Dowling was offered a position of senior vice president of hospital services at Northwell Health, formerly North Shore-LIJ Health System. In 1997, he advanced to executive vice president and CEO and in 2002 became president and CEO. 

He has led the expansion of Northwell. Not only does Northwell operate hospitals but has a network of 900 outpatient facilities in the state. It provides rehabilitation, kidney dialysis, urgent care, hospice and home care programs. It runs the Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research with 50 research laboratories, and is a partner with Hofstra University in the Zucker School of Medicine and Hofstra/Northwell School of Nursing and Physician Assistant Studies.

On a personal level, my family has been treated at Northwell hospitals in Suffolk—at Mather in Port Jefferson, Huntington Hospital and Peconic Bay Medical Center in Riverhead (I had two cataract operations there). Excellence in care is what I observed at them all.  

Olivia O’Mahony and Patricia Harty write about Dowling at the end of their Irish America article: “From dock-hand to teacher, from government worker to businessman, Dowling’s experience allows him to think from a multitude of positions and see the world through the eyes of those from all walks of life….” 

Next week: Dr. Edmund Pellegrino and Stony Brook Medicine. 

Karl Grossman is a veteran investigative reporter and columnist, the winner of numerous awards for his work and a member of the L.I. Journalism Hall of Fame. He is a professor of journalism at SUNY/College at Old Westbury and the author of six books.