Karen Santucci named chief medical officer at Greenwich Hospital

Dr. Karen Santucci has been named senior vice president and chief medical officer at Greenwich Hospital, effective Sept. 1. She will also continue as a professor of pediatrics and emergency medicine at the Yale School of Medicine.

Santucci will report to Norman Roth, the hospital”™s president and CEO, and Thomas Balcezak, executive vice president and chief clinical officer of parent organization Yale New Haven Health.

Santucci will provide strategic direction for all Greenwich Hospital clinical and medical staff programs and services. Dr. Spike Lipschutz will assume the role of vice president of medical affairs, responsible for quality and safety as well as medical administrative matters, and will report to Santucci.

The new chief medical officer has been a pediatric emergency medicine physician at Yale New Haven Hospital for the past 21 years. She has served as the section chief of pediatric emergency medicine at Yale since 2006 and the pediatric vice chair of clinical affairs at Yale New Haven Children”™s Hospital since 2017.

In the latter role, she treated patients in the YNHCH emergency department, a level one pediatric trauma center, specializing in caring for children with a wide range of illnesses and injuries, from urgent to emergent situations.

Since 2017, she has served in a dual role working at both YNHCH in New Haven and the emergency department at Greenwich Hospital. In collaboration with the medical director of the Greenwich emergency department, YNHCH and the department of pediatrics at Yale, Santucci brought 24/7 pediatric emergency medicine specialists to the hospital.