NYC Health + Hospitals has appointed Kevin Lynch as the health system’s new CIO and senior vice president.
Lynch comes to NYC Health + Hospitals from Los Angeles County—the nation’s second largest public health system, trailing only NYC Health + Hospitals—where he has served as the CIO for the Department of Health Services since 2010, with expanded responsibilities for the county’s Department of Mental Health, Department of Public Health, and Integrated Correctional Health Services starting in July 2016, according to a press release announcing the appointment.
Lynch’s 25 years in health IT leadership also includes his experience as corporate director at Jackson Health System, in Miami Dade County, often ranked the third largest public health system in the country. And in both of his most recent positions, Lynch “oversaw the successful transformation from a fragmented clinical IT system to a system rooted in enterprise-wide electronic health records [EHRs],” according to the announcement from NYC Health + Hospitals.
The appointment of Lynch comes at the request of Mitchell Katz, M.D., who is scheduled to take over as President and CEO of NYC Health + Hospitals in January. “I know Kevin’s work well, and I am especially excited that he will bring with him the knowledge and experience from having developed enterprise-wide IT systems,” Katz said in a statement. “He understands not just the technical IT details, but also the nuances related to integrating and standardizing complex systems for a large public health system.”
In July, it was announced that Edward Marx, who at the time was providing IT leadership and strategy for NYC Health + Hospitals, would be taking the CIO job at Cleveland Clinic. Last year, Charles Perry, M.D., an NYC Health + Hospital senior executive, resigned from his position due to his concerns that the health system’s implementation of a new EHR system was launching too early. The New York City-based health system signed a contract with Epic Systems in 2013 to implement the vendor’s EHR system across the enterprise, a project that was slated to cost nearly $800 million.
