NYC Health + Hospitals has named the former CIO of the Los Angeles Department of Health and Human Services to oversee its technology efforts moving forward.
Kevin Lynch will take over as the CIO and senior vice president at the largest public health system in the country, after serving for the last seven years as the top IT official in Los Angeles at the nation's second-largest public health system. His appointment comes at the request of his former colleague Mitchell Katz, M.D., who served as director of the Los Angeles County Health Agency before accepting a position to become the NYC Health + Hospital’s CEO in September.
Kevin Lynch Is Named Chief Information Officer and Senior Vice President @NYCHealthSystem. https://t.co/KbM1yJXQmu pic.twitter.com/6Hr3pQJGm0
— NYC Health+Hospitals (@NYCHealthSystem) December 1, 2017
Lynch has previously held leadership positions at Jackson Health System in Miami Dade County and Tenet Health System. He will begin his appointment in January, according to an announcement.
The New York system is in the midst of a $764 million upgrade to an Epic EHR platform, which was initially scheduled to finish by the end of 2018, but has been pushed back to December 2020. Earlier this year, the system announced plans to implemented revenue cycle management technology as part of that EHR upgrade, which could help capture an additional $142 million in annual revenue.
“I know Kevin’s work well, and I am especially excited that he will bring with him the knowledge and experience from having developed enterprisewide IT systems,” Katz said in an announcement. “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.”
The announcement comes months after the departure of Edward Marx, who provided IT leadership and strategy to NYC Health and Hospitals before taking a job as CIO at the Cleveland Clinic. In 2016, Charles Perry, M.D., who identified himself as the system’s chief medical information officer, resigned from his position, comparing the EHR implementation to the 1986 Challenger space shuttle disaster.