Michael D. Israel is retiring as president and CEO of the Westchester Medical Center and the Westchester Medical Center Health Network at the end of next year after serving about 20 years. The organization’s board of directors has hired the executive search firm Russell Reynolds Associates based in Stamford to conduct a nationwide search for a successor.
“In June I will be 71,” Israel told the Business Journal in an interview. “The last contract that I signed was in June of 2020 and it was a five-year contract and I told the board at that time, ‘this will be my last contract.’ In 2025 I will have been serving as the president and CEO of first the Medical Center and then WMCHealth for 20 years. I am a firm believer that there comes a point in time where it is healthy for an organization to be viewed through maybe a different set of eyes. Twenty years is an outstanding amount of time especially since, as search firms were interviewed to determine who will find candidates for this position, it was astonishing to find out that the average tenure of a health care CEO, hospital CEO or health care system CEO in the U.S. is now four years.”
Israel said that he has been in health care management for 49 years and his wife has allowed his career to take them from New Jersey to Pittsburgh to Houston to Durham, North Carolina, and then to New York.
“It’s time that my wife gets me full-time,” Israel said. “Our three children and our soon-to-be fifth grandchild all live in a different part of the country. It’s time to make a change.”
Israel said that the reason for making the announcement of his retirement about twenty months before it will take place is that the search firm Russell Reynolds Associates does an enormous number of CEO searches in health care and said that the normal time the process takes is between 12 and 15 months.
“We want a smooth transition,” Israel said. “The definition of smooth transition is the board does its due diligence and has the opportunity to interview the appropriate number of people, to give the search firm the opportunity to find those individuals, and to hire somebody and then for me to be available. Mind you, I love this place. I love the Medical Center. I’m very, very proud of the work we’ve done not only in Valhalla and Westchester County but throughout the Hudson Valley and I will be available to the Medical Center for counsel as long as they desire. But, we feel that this is the right amount of time for a smooth transition.”
Israel came to the Medical Center at a time when it was in financial trouble and various bailouts and restructuring ideas had been floated. While it was clear that the Medical Center provided vital medical services to a large population, it was also clear that it would take a major restructuring and new management to get it on its feet. A May 2005 report prepared by State Assembly Member Amy Paulin of Westchester said, “In spite of the Medical Center’s current fiscal crisis and operational difficulties, it is imperative to sustain the ongoing operations of the Medical Center to assure that the people of Westchester County and the surrounding Hudson Valley region are provided with quality health and medical care for many years to come.”
Today, the WMC Health Network includes nine hospitals covering eight counties with nearly 1,800 beds. WMCHealth employs more than 13,000 people and has nearly 3,000 attending physicians. Two medical groups make up WMCHealth Physicians. WMCHealth’s Westchester Medical Center and Maria Fareri Children’s Hospital are affiliated with New York Medical College, training more than 500 residents and fellows each year.
WMCHealth is home to the Hudson Valley’s only: Level I (highest acuity) trauma centers for both adults and children; organ transplant center; full-service heart center; advanced care children’s hospital (Maria Fareri Children’s Hospital); pediatric intensive care unit; Level IV (highest acuity) regional neonatal intensive care unit; burn center (verified by the American Burn Association and the only burn center in Eastern NYS between NYS and Canada); comprehensive stroke center.
Israel said that one of the hospital’s shining moments was in its handling of one of the nation’s most traumatic events, the Covid-19 pandemic. New York state selected WMCHealth to be the vaccine distribution coordinator for the Hudson Valley Region HUB in its Regional Vaccine Network. WMCHealth led more than 300 hospitals, health care organizations, community associations and others to ensure the equitable and efficient distribution of Covid-19 vaccines to Westchester, Rockland, Orange, Putnam, Dutchess, Ulster and Sullivan counties. With WMCHealth’s oversight more than 2 million doses were distributed throughout the region. WMCHealth also supported the work of four state-run mass vaccination centers, one of which was at the Westchester County Center.
Among the projects to enhance medical care in the Hudson Valley taking place during Israel’s watch have been: affiliations with the HealthAlliance of the Hudson Valley and Bon Secours Charity Health System; the renovation and upgrading of the network’s hospitals and construction of the eight-story, 260,000-square-foot Ambulatory Care Pavilion on the Valhalla campus; a $113 million expansion and enhancement of the HealthAlliance Hospital in Kingston; planning for a five-story Critical Care Tower at the Medical Center in Valhalla expected to open in the spring of 2026.
Israel said that through its various expansions over the years WMCHealth has brought to the Hudson Valley a level of medical care that previously was unavailable in the area.
“We do a lot of very, very advanced programs. As an example, we have the second largest heart transplant program in the state of New York,” Israel said. “We’ve been able to put Level II and Level III trauma programs in some of our other hospitals across the Hudson Valley. If done right, networks will increase the level of services and the types of service that are provided in communities.”
Israel expressed a belief that every job he had before coming to Westchester prepared him for the challenges he would be facing in Valhalla. Among the positions he held were executive vice president at St. Luke’s Episcopal Hospital/Texas Heart Institute, CEO of Duke University Hospital, Duke University’s vice chancellor for health affairs and vice president of the Duke University Health System, and COO the North Shore Long Island Jewish Health System.
“When I take a look at the institution here today and compare it to what existed (in 2005) I am just so proud and so grateful that the board and the medical staff and the employees entrusted me with the ability to lead this organization. I love this place,” Israel said. “This is without a doubt the biggest challenge I’ve had in my career but it is incredibly satisfying and I can only say that I hope that I gave as much to the organization and to the patients we serve as this experience has given me personally.”
