Spotlight On: Kevin Beiner, Chief Operating Officer-elect, Northwell Health

October 2025 — Kevin Beiner, chief operating officer-elect of Northwell Health, spoke with Invest: about bringing world-class healthcare into new communities. “It is our job to make the big feel small. Patients and their physicians don’t need to experience the magnitude of large systems, they just want to receive great care,” Beiner said.

What are your top priorities as you step into your new role, and how do you plan to balance continuity with innovation?

No matter what, we have to maintain a focus on providing great care to our patients. With this new role, my first priority is to navigate the transition. The current CEO and COO and other senior leaders are retiring. We are in the final stages of putting together the new team, mostly an internal group, and ensuring everybody is organized, rowing in the same direction, and able to take the organization to the next level. Our second priority is converting electronic medical records, a fairly comprehensive, consuming transformation. While it may seem like a tech initiative, it is actually an operational change. We are changing our workflows and improving the physician-patient experience. Lastly, we recently acquired seven new hospitals in Upstate New York and Connecticut. The work of merging those facilities is a meticulous, methodical, and slow process.

How do you maintain or improve operational efficiency without sacrificing patient quality of care?

We continue to grow and like to expand into new communities and fill clinical gaps. We are very big and, if we are successful, we take the value of our size to export our high quality care. We have great thought leadership in our organization and can standardize care across that continuum. At the same time, we like to be locally adept. It is our job to make the big feel small. Patients and their physicians don’t need to experience the magnitude of large systems, they just want to receive great care.

How do you envision integrating new technologies into Northwell’s operations to improve patient outcomes?

Digital transformation is front and center. To some extent, it is the basics like redoing electronic medical records. We are working with Salesforce to provide a better patient and physician access experience. We have very innovative physicians and professionals across Northwell who push us to gain traction in the areas of AI. We are being thoughtful and careful. We want to ensure we are responsible with the use of technology and are doing it in a way in which our physicians are comfortable.

In your view, what are the most critical elements of the patient experience in today’s healthcare environment, and how does Northwell plan to enhance those areas in the coming years?

Patients want convenience, and care where they are at. This is why Northwell, a New York-based provider, is in Florida now. Our constituents want us there because they want continuity of care. When they go back and forth during the seasons, they can see a familiar provider with the same records. We go into communities to listen and learn. It’s about meeting them where they are rather than telling them to meet us where we are.

How are you addressing workforce challenges?

The answer is culture. When we got over the pandemic, the healthcare workforce across the country became very challenging. People left their roles or went part-time. We saw staffing shortages. We did better than most and recovered a lot faster because of years of investing in our workforce and taking the time to provide opportunities for education and growth. We celebrate our diversity. We do things that others aspire to do and we never saw our culture as a luxury, but rather as a basic requirement. We’ve developed accredited programs in New York where we train people to become professionals. On the other side of that training is a job offer, and we’ve been very successful in filling roles. We started our own medical school and nursing school, both of which have been successful. We partnered with New York City to open a high school in fall 2025 for young people interested in careers in healthcare, particularly nursing, radiology, and physical therapy.

How are you navigating Northwell’s strategic growth?

We are growing no matter what we do, and it’s a matter of cultivating leadership and clinical teams that fit the culture, share our values, and then we empower them. We like to hold people accountable, then get out of the way. We are too big to operate as a command-and-control operation, so we ensure we have the right leadership in place. We have a responsibility to maintain our mission while having a margin. We have programs working with faith-based groups across our entire network. We understand that underserved communities have great trust with their church, synagogue, mosque, or other place of worship. We want to be seen as trusted partners in these communities without being heavy-handed. We have to treat every community differently.

What strategies will you pursue to ensure Northwell remains financially healthy while continuing to provide high-quality care?

The economics of healthcare are going to get more difficult, but we don’t use that as an excuse. We like to be optimistic and think differently. We like to diversify our businesses and ensure we are staying profitable, so that on the other side of the ledger we can maintain our mission as a community-based not-for-profit. Hospitals across the country will have greater challenges as a result of the overall economic environment, but we sometimes see opportunity in that rather than a threat. We strive to protect quality, our core, and patient care no matter what.

Where do you see the biggest opportunities for growth and development within the healthcare industry in Palm Beach?

I see a shift in the ambulatory community-based space. There are many things we can do better and safer outside of the four walls of the hospital, and that’s an area we are leaning into. Geographically, there is growth in the Northeast and Florida. We try to stay where our communities want us to be. We will see growth in tech innovations and in the ways that our patients seek access to care.

How do you see the role of data analytics in shaping Northwell’s operational strategies?

We focus on metrics that align with our goals to provide the safest care with outcomes people expect, in the way that they want it. We measure safety across the continuum. We measure outcomes in terms of how people with chronic diseases get better in our care. We are respectful of their expectations, families, and unique situations, and try to provide a high-quality experience.

How is Northwell Health adapting to clients’ evolving expectations?

It starts with listening. We have family and patient councils in many of our communities. We go out into the communities and ask pointed questions about how we are doing. One of the friction points was how people access us. Some people want to pick up the phone and others want to use a smartphone app. This is where our digital transformation comes in. We have to understand where the patient wants us to go, and invest and take the initiative to get there.

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