Northwell’s Michael Dowling steps down

It’s the end of an era for Northwell Health: Michael Dowling, the health system’s CEO of more than 23 years, announced he is stepping down on Oct. 1.

Northwell is the largest health system in New York. It operates 28 hospitals and more than 1,000 care facilities and brought in $18.6 billion in operating revenue in 2024. The hospital finalized a merger with Connecticut-based Nuvance Health on May 7. 

“It has been an extraordinary privilege to lead Northwell through a period of unprecedented growth and clinical transformation,” Dowling said in a statement on May 14.

After he steps down, Dowling will take the role of CEO emeritus and support the system as an advisor, according to a Northwell press release.

He’ll be succeeded by John D’Angelo, who’s been with the health system for more than 25 years and currently serves as EVP, market president, and chief of integrated operations. An emergency medicine physician, he previously served as executive director and SVP of Northwell’s emergency medicine service line.

“Healthcare 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 critically important mission,” D’Angelo said in a statement.

Looking back. A key accomplishment during Dowling’s tenure includes making Northwell the first health system to vaccinate its frontline staff against Covid-19.

“I just wanted to do it quickly because it’d give confidence to the staff and everybody else,” he told Healthcare Brew in 2023.

At the time, he told us he planned to hand the CEO reins over in “the next couple of years,” though he couldn’t “ever contemplate” actually retiring.

“The key role for someone like me is to make sure that the next leadership can build upon what you’ve developed,” he said at the time. “It’s a balance between staying around long enough to build, but not staying too long that you diminish the creativity of the organization.”