Event Recaps

Michael Dowling speaks at LIBDC Town of Islip dinner, Feb. 2, 2017

More than 100 Long Island Business Development Council members, members of the business community, government agencies, elected officials and guests attended the LIBDC dinner sponsored by the Town of Islip Economic Development at the Southward Ho Country Club in Bay Shore on February 2, 2017.

The opening remarks by LIBDC Co-Chairman Ted Sasso were followed by a welcoming address from Islip Town Supervisor Angie Carpenter. Hosted by William Mannix, Executive Director of the Town of Islip IDA, notable guests were FJ McCarthy, Chairman of Southside Hospital and member of the Board of Trustees for Northwell Health; Donna Moravick, Executive Director of Southside Hospital; Nora Perry, Vice President of Development for Southside Hospital; Peter Hoffman, Director of the Board of Trustees, Northwell Health; Kevin Beiner, Senior Vice President & Regional Executive Director for the Eastern Region, Northwell Health; Islip Councilwoman Trish Bergin Weichbrodt, and Councilmen Steve Flotteron and John Cochrane; Huntington Town Councilman Mark Cuthbertson; and former Suffolk County Executive Steve Levy.

Featured speaker Michael Dowling, President and CEO of Northwell Health, commanded the attention of the audience with his presentation on “The Future of Healthcare in a Populist America.” Excerpts follow:

“What I think is going to happen in Washington is they’re going to nibble around the edges of Obamacare and give us something that’s 80 or 90 percent the same and they’ll call it Trump Care and tell us it’s the best thing we’ve ever seen.”

“You can be affected by outside events, but you don’t have to be controlled by them. You can’t sit there and become catatonic by what they’re doing in Washington. We have a plan and we’ll execute it. We may have to adapt it a bit, but that’s what you do, you adapt and move forward.”

“There has been a lot of consolidation among hospitals and you will see a lot more of it. Because if you don’t have scale, you can’t do any of the things you really want to do. Scale is really, really important. We’re in (merger) talks with hospitals in Westchester and Connecticut and New Jersey and Philadelphia as well as on Long Island. We’re going to get bigger.”

“We’ve invested heavily in ambulatory care centers, in getting treatment to people outside hospitals, and the result is our hospitals are totally packed, the highest in-patient volume in a decade, because as you expand your services you meet more people who need care they can only get in a hospital. No one predicted that.”

“You’ve got to disrupt yourself, because if you don’t, someone else is going to do it for you. You don’t want to be the health care equivalent of a taxi operator in Manhattan and wake up one day to an Uber.”