CLINICAL INNOVATORS
Interview by
KATLYN NEMANI, MD
Expanding Care for the
Sickest: An Interview with
Gary Gottlieb, MD
G
ary L. Gottlieb, MD, MBA, served as
president and CEO of Partners HealthCare, Massachusetts’ largest private
employer and biggest health care provider, from
January 2010, to March 2015. He recently became
the CEO of Partners In Health, a Boston-based
global health organization. After receiving his B.S.
cum laude from the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Dr. Gottlieb earned his MD from the Albany
Medical College of Union University in a 6-year
accelerated biomedical program. He completed
his internship and residency, then served as Chief
Resident at New York University/Bellevue Medical Center. Dr. Gottlieb also earned an MBA with
distinction in health care administration from the
University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of
Business. In addition to his noteworthy academic,
clinical, and management record, Dr. Gottlieb has
published extensively in geriatric psychiatry and
health care policy.
You have had a remarkably varied career—
transitioning from a practicing psychiatrist to
a national health care leader. Can you describe
your journey?
I chose to train at Bellevue because I had an interest
in caring for the patients with greatest need—patients with brain disease, with severe and persistent
mental illness in the context of poverty, substance
use, and medical risk. One of my mentors at Bellevue encouraged me to become a Robert Wood
Johnson Foundation Clinical Scholar and I went
to the University of Pennsylvania for the program.
While I was a Clinical Scholar I earned an MBA
in health care administration and was recruited to
build Penn’s first program in Geriatric Psychiatry. I
had the good fortune of being supported in learning
how to manage and how to build programs from
scratch in areas that I was passionate about, becoming Interim Chair of Psychiatry and Associate Dean
for Managed Care of Penn’s Health System and then
CEO of Friends Hospital.
38 CardioSource WorldNews
In 1998, Partners HealthCare and its visionary
CEO, Sam Thier, made a major commitment to
invest in psychiatry and behavioral neuroscience
when peer institutions were diminishing their
investments in mental health. Sam recruited me to
become chair of Partners Psychiatry, and gave me
the opportunity to work with some of the greatest
people in the field. From there I became President
of North Shore Medical Center and, in 2002, President of Brigham and Women’s Hospital.
When I started at the Brigham, Victor Dzau, a
brilliant cardiologist who was Chair of Medicine,
was working with Paul Farmer to create a new
division of global health equity in the Department
of Medicine at the Brigham. Together with Howard
Hiatt and Marshall Wolf, they developed a superb
“My wife and I went
down to Haiti in the
weeks that followed
[the earthquake]. I saw
first hand the kind of
work that had inspired
my career, trying to
figure out how to bring
the best and brightest
people to care for the
sickest and neediest
populations.”
division and a global health residency program. I
was swept away by their passion and vision and
I had the privilege of supporting their work. We
recruited Jim Kim back from the World Health
Organization to become the chief of that division.
Soon after, I joined the board of Partners In Health
(PIH) and traveled to Rwanda and Haiti. Needless
to say, I fell in love with Paul Farmer and Ophelia
Dahl and the work that they were doing. I helped to
continue supporting their work when I became the
CEO of Partners HealthCare in 2010.
About 12 days after I started as the CEO of
Partners HealthCare, one of the great tragedies
of the western world occurred with the massive
earthquake in Haiti. We already had people on the
ground from PIH and the Brigham, and the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) immediately
deployed its Disaster Management Assistance Team
and assisted with the work of the USNS Comfort.
My wife and I went down to Haiti in the weeks that
followed. I saw first hand the kind of work that
had inspired my career, trying to figure out how to
bring the best and the brightest people to care for
the sickest and the neediest populations.
At what point did you begin thinking about
transitioning from CEO of Partners HealthCare
to CEO of Partners In Health?
Well, last year as my 60th birthday approached, I
was thinking about what opportunities might lay
ahead and we heard that Ophelia Dahl was going
to step down as Executive Director of PIH. A couple
of fellow board members ultimately approached me
to see if I might be interested in making this major
shift in my life. I discussed it that night with my
wife, who is my most powerful inspiration and is a
much better person than I am (she has an endowed
chair in public and community psychiatry at the
MGH and is the director of the Kraft program for
community health). She said, “You have to do this.
This is why we became doctors.” So I made the decision to do it last fall.
September 2015