Marc Napp
Senior Vice President of Medical Affairs and Deputy Chief Medical Officer
MOUNT SINAI HEALTH SYSTEM
Dr. Napp is Senior Vice President for Medical Affairs and Deputy Chief Medical Officer of the Mount Sinai Health System in New York City. In this role, he oversees medical staff operations, health care quality, regulatory compliance, and clinical integration across the Health System’s seven hospital campuses, having been recruited to help manage the merger of Mount Sinai with Continuum Health Partners. Prior to joining Mount Sinai, Dr. Napp served in a similar capacity at the North Shore – Long Island Jewish Health System, overseeing medical affairs for the System’s 16 hospitals and more than 11,000 health care practitioners. His responsibilities included system-wide oversight of credentialing and privileging, practitioner clinical quality and well-being, medico-legal affairs, and physician leadership development.
Why is the role of the Chief Medical Officer important?
The CMO ensures that the medical staff machine functions properly and optimally in the interests of the community, the patients, the staff and the members of the medical staff, themselves. The CMO translates the organization’s overarching vision into the components that are most relevant to the medical staff and is the guide to getting the medical staff to appreciate and support that vision.
What has been your greatest achievement within your current role?
I would point to two.
I don’t know that it would appear on a traditional list of accomplishments, but for me the achievement of which I am most proud is the identification and development of junior leaders. Having left direct patient care nearly 15 years ago, I long miss the intense, dramatic feeling of really helping another person. As a surgeon who cared for trauma victims, I occasionally had the opportunity to intervene and really pull someone from the jaws of death. Nothing compares. But, since leaving the OR, I have had to find other ways to achieve that sense of giving and helping. Leadership development is how I now achieve it.
The other achievement, which is actually an ongoing work-in-progress, is the effort to address our punitive culture. By gradually acculturating key constituencies across our organization in the principles of just culture through formal education, as well as informal feedback and coaching, we are addressing this matter head on.
What are you most looking forward to regarding the Healthcare Chief Medical Officer Forum?
Having served in a chief medical officer capacity in a small, stand-alone, suburban community hospital; a large, stand-alone, urban teaching hospital; and two large health systems anchored by academic medical centers, I appreciate the critical importance of networking with other CMOs. When working in the stand-alone facilities, it was awfully lonely and the lack of ongoing mentorship was a serious impediment to my own professional development and to the organizations’ overall performance.
The CMO Forum is an opportunity to network and build a cadre of skilled, experienced and insightful colleagues to lean on and learn from. We need not all make the same mistakes. I would much prefer to learn from the mistakes of others and to share the lessons that I have learned.
Marc will be one of the distinguished speakers at the Healthcare Chief Medical Officer Forum.
