Gottlieb Named President and CEO of Partners HealthCare

Search for Next BWH President Underway

The Partners Board of Directors in February voted unanimously to offer the position of president and CEO of Partners HealthCare to BWH President Gary Gottlieb, MD, MBA. In January, he will succeed Partners President and CEO James J. Mongan, MD, who is retiring at the end of the year.

At BWH, Marshall Moriarty, chair of the BW/F Board of Directors, has convened and chairs a 10-person committee representing hospital chiefs, board members and other constituencies within the greater BWH community. The search committee anticipates having the next BWH president on board when Gottlieb begins at Partners next year to ensure a seamless transition.

Gottlieb, who became president of BWH in 2002, said that the decision was not easy for him. “The seven years we have spent together and the times we have shared have helped shape and strengthen a vision that is full of hope and promise for our future,” he said in a message to the BWH community.

“I love my job as president of BWH because each day I have the opportunity, together with you, to carry forward our mission: to explore new ways to improve the care we provide our patients and the support to their families; to expand the boundaries of science that open new doors and allow us to translate our findings into easing pain, curing illness and restructuring health care delivery; and to embrace the next generation of health care clinicians, to help lift them to their full potential,” he said.

Since he began as BWH president, the hospital has received dozens of prestigious awards for quality, safety and efficiency, establishing it as a national and international leader in academic medicine. These awards include a consistent spot on U.S. News & World Report’s annual honor roll of America’s Best Hospitals, the quality award from the National Quality Forum and five-star and top-performer ratings from the University HealthSystem Consortium, a national association of academic medical centers that focuses on quality and performance improvement.

With Gottlieb at the helm, BWH became a strong advocate for transparency and public reporting of quality and safety data, locally and nationally. BWH was among the first hospitals to participate in the voluntary reporting for Medicaid’s HCAHPS (Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems), and last year, it posted its quality data on its Web site. His commitment to quality does not stop with gathering, sharing and publishing the data, as Gottlieb ensures BWH consistently analyzes and uses this data to improve performance and safety.

Gottlieb has served within the Partners system for the past decade, including as president of North Shore Medical Center prior to joining BWH. He began at Partners in 1998 as the first chairman of Partners Psychiatry and Mental Health. A nationally recognized psychiatrist and health care administrator, he also is highly regarded as a leader within the community. He served as co-chair of the Mayor’s Task Force to Eliminate Health Disparities and continues to chair the Private Industry Council, the mayor’s workforce development board. Gottlieb’s efforts are crucial to guiding and building a health care labor force for the future.

“Since he joined Partners in 1998 as our first chairman of Partners Psychiatry and Mental Health and professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, Dr. Gottlieb has brought his immense talent and thoughtful leadership to every facet of the Partners organization—and to the greater Boston community,” said Jack Connors, Jr., chairman of the Partners Board of Directors.

Connors and Gottlieb thanked Mongan for his generosity, wisdom and dedication to the Partners HealthCare system and its 50,000 employees during the last seven years. Under Mongan’s leadership, Partners has become a national model of an integrated, academic health care delivery system committed to quality, access and cost management. Mongan’s signature initiative—Partners High Performance Medicine—made the electronic medical record system a reality for all primary care physicians throughout the system, reducing medication errors, improving care and developing opportunities to better manage costs.

“As I think of the challenges that lie ahead, I stand in awe of all Dr. Mongan has achieved during his years as Partners CEO,” Gottlieb said. “We owe him our deepest gratitude for his passionate leadership and for the path of progress he carved with a steady hand and unshakeable devotion; it is a path we will continue to follow by the same compass and commitment to our mission.”

Search Committee:

G.M. Moriarty, Chair
Robert L. Barbieri, MD, Chairman, Department of OB/GYN, BWF/BWH Trustee
Eugene Braunwald, MD, Distinguished Hersey Professor of Medicine, HMS and Chairman, TIMI Study Group, BWH
Gretchen Fish, BWF/BWH Trustee
Mairead L. Hickey, PhD, RN, Vice President, Patient Care Services and Chief Nursing Officer, BWH
Joseph Loscalzo, MD, PhD, Physician-in-Chief, Chairman, Department of Medicine, BWH, BWF/BWH Trustee
Jim Manzi, BWF/BWH Trustee
David A. Thomas, Professor and Sr. Associate Dean, Harvard Business School, BWF/BWH Trustee
Peter L. Slavin, MD, MBA, President, Massachusetts General Hospital
Rev. Gloria R. White-Hammond, MD, BWF/BWH Trustee