Episode summary
How This Massive NYC Health System Changed Its Business Model | At Barron's
At Barron's
· · Hosts: Andy Serwer · Guests: Robert Grossman
Summary
NYU Langone Health grew from a roughly $2 billion hospital operation with no margin into a $15 billion system with 53,000 employees by shifting away from a traditional inpatient model. Robert Grossman said the core move was to bias the business toward ambulatory care, building 320 outpatient sites across the New York metropolitan area while keeping only six hospitals. He argued that outpatient care is more efficient, more patient-centered, and less expensive, while still delivering high quality in safe settings.
Grossman said the turnaround also depended on transparency, accountability, and a single operating dashboard built on Epic and PeopleSoft. He described combining the medical school and hospital leadership, eliminating a management layer, and pushing a culture centered on excellence and agility. He also said quality should be tied directly to the bottom line and to reimbursement.
On health policy, Grossman argued that U.S. care quality is generally excellent but access needs improvement. He favored stronger incentives for quality, more ambulatory care, and continued support for NIH funding, which he called “seed corn” for discoveries. He was skeptical of single-payer models, arguing they can create long waits for elective procedures.
Key takeaways
- Grossman said NYU Langone’s growth came from shifting the model from inpatient care to 320 ambulatory sites, not from simply adding hospitals.
- He said Epic and a single dashboard gave the system “one source of truth” and helped management tie quality to financial performance.
- Grossman argued the biggest policy lever is to incent quality in Medicare payments rather than simply expand access without accountability.
- He said cutting NIH funding would be a mistake because the research dollars act like “seed corn” for future medical discoveries.
- He said succession planning was completed and he is “delighted” that NYU Langone has a successor ready to continue the strategy.
Notable quotes
“we changed our business model. The traditional hospital business model is uh inpatient and we biased our model to ambulatory”
“So we have 320 ambulatory sites in the New York metropolitan area only six hospitals”
“we created a dashboard with one source of truth and we managed to that”
“the most important thing about a hospital is the quality of the hospital bar none”
“the NIH is uh the money is like seed corn”
How the episode opens
Hello everyone and welcome to At Barren. I'm Andy Serur and welcome to our guest Dr. Robert Gman, CEO of NYU Langon Health.
Great to see you, doctor. Pleasure to be here. So, everyone knows about this health care uh system, I guess, or hospital system uh in New York City, but maybe people around the country don't know it as well.
So, why don't you give us the lay of the land? It's one of the biggest and best hospital systems in the United States. Uh thank you.
Yes. So, NYU Langon is a hospital system. It's composed of six hospitals including the Tish and Kimmel Hospital Pavilion, uh Hassenfeld Children's Hospital, Langone Orthopedic Hospital, uh uh Langon Long Island, which is in Minnola, uh Langon uh Brooklyn, and and then uh we just uh had a recent hospital acquisition in Suffach County at Langone.
own uh NYU Lango and Suffach County, right? And that's must be thousands of employees as well, right? We have 53,000 employees.
Our revenue this year is over $15 billion and we're the number one health system in the United States for quality and safety. It's interesting about revenue, and I saw that in your financial report that maybe people don't think about those types of numbers in terms of hospitals, but you have a P&L. Yes.
Just like other businesses. How does a hospital's P&L work? It works like other P&Ls because it is a business.
Even if we're not forprofit, but instead of playing shareholders, we invest in research and education and in our clinical mission, right? Where do the revenues come from then? For instance, the revenues come from uh clinical revenue, both inpatient and ambulatory uh procedures.
uh that's the biggest share of the revenue and then we have obviously um philanthropy and grants things like that.
From the episode’s captions: roughly the first two minutes, lightly cleaned. Keep watching on YouTube →
Topics
- health system business model
- nyc healthcare transformation
- ceo strategy
- healthcare operations changes
- growth and transformation
Companies and tickers mentioned
- NYU Langone Health
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Summary, takeaways and quote selection by Octagon. Quotes are short excerpts; the full conversation is in the episode.
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