Northwell enlists former Army doc, helicopter rescuer, as new CEO

Dr. John D’Angelo wrote a letter to Northwell CEO Michael Dowling in 2003, asking the high-profile leader if the health system would create a pay-gap program for veterans transitioning out of service and into civilian medical roles.

“He didn’t know me. I was here for only three years,” D’Angelo told The Post of when he split time between the front lines of Glen Cove Hospital and being an active duty Army reservist doctor.

“He wrote me back and said, ‘Absolutely, we’re doing this.’ I became the first recipient of it. He approached me after graduation from that leadership program and said, ‘We want you to run all emergency medicine.’”

Now, after 23 years at the helm, Dowling has another appointment for D’Angelo — his successor as CEO, starting Wednesday.

“I get to be part of the next evolution,” D’Angelo said, lauding his predecessor, who came to New York from Ireland and worked many dirty blue-collar jobs as “someone you want to follow, but not because he’s the boss.

“We have different backgrounds, different leadership styles, but I think we both have a real commitment to the purpose of why we do what we do,” said D’Angelo, who came to West Babylon from the West Bronx with his many siblings as a little boy.

“And that’s not going to change,” he said near his new office at Northwell’s New Hyde Park headquarters.

While Dowling rose in the ranks of public health management, D’Angelo’s emergency medical tenure has been much more boots-on-the-ground, or at times, in-the-air.

He began his over 25-year career in the field as an urgently needed flight physician on helicopters during residency at Pennsylvania’s Geisinger Medical Center.

“There are so many stories where you can actually take people back who are at the brink of death,” he said, emotionally adding that so many times it is, sadly, the opposite outcome.

“When I think about those stories, it really keeps me grounded in why we do what we do, the importance of what we do, and the purpose of what we do.”

Days on the frontlines

Since those early days, he has ridden on the back of ambulances and, like on the helicopter, brought trauma patients back from death’s door in the operating room before running emergency medicine for Northwell.

D’Angelo, who had almost pursued a more routine orthopedic surgery gig, said he was immediately hooked on the life-saving “detective work” of assessing patients as they rushed through the door.

“I had a lot of street credibility then. People started to look at me as the guy who reliably would deliver results, get things done, and figure things out.”

“With that credibility, I was given more and more leeway to really challenge how we do things.”

That extensive trust led to D’Angelo and a computer-savvy team to build “a whole suite of real-time [technological] tools that the organization continues to use today,” he added.

Having previously managed hurricane impacts and the Ebola outbreak, D’Angelo was tasked as an operations chief during the pandemic’s worst phases. He managed “the whole nine yards” from testing and vaccines to emergency operations for patients.

“That was one of the scariest times in my career, but also the most rewarding,” he said. “Covid was a real display of what is required, I think, of health care leaders going forward.”

Now, it’s D’Angelo’s turn to cement a new legacy for the behemoth of the tri-state, as a significant priority is continuing to integrate Connecticut’s Nuvance Health — a system that merged with Northwell in May.

“I think we will make a lot of progress in the first year — and I think that’s critically important,” he said.

And, on Wednesday, D’Angelo plans to pay it forward to all of those grinding at Northwell’s many facilities.

“I think it’s really important that I get out there on day one and just go to our people,” he said. “I like to walk the floors, thank people, and answer any questions…I’m very excited.”