Stony Brook University Hospital (SBUH) officially appointed Interim Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Carol Gomes,  to the permanent position of CEO, according to a press release on Feb. 4.

Gomes will also retain her previous position as Chief Operations Officer, which she’s held since Feb. 2013. She started her career in the SBUH clinical chemistry and histology laboratories and has moved up through the administrative ranks throughout her more than 35-year career, according to the press release.

“In every position Carol has held at Stony Brook University Hospital, she has led with passion for transformative healthcare and championed delivering the highest quality of care to our patients,” Michael Bernstein, interim president of Stony Brook University, wrote in the press release.

Gomes is also an alumna of Stony Brook University (SBU), having received two Master’s degrees in Management and Policy, and Healthcare Management and Administration. 

In an email to The Statesman, Gomes outlined her goals as CEO, which includes an “emphasis on communication and providing compassionate and coordinated care,” while also continuing to expand the hospital’s “multidisciplinary centers of excellence” — such as Stony Brook Cancer Center and Stony Brook Children’s Hospital — surgery programs and continuing the Centralized Throughput Office, which was created in 2019 to encourage smoother patient flow.

“To deliver this seamless care, physicians and leaders carry out the objective to improve coordination of complex patient cases while at the same time improving efficiency and lowering the cost of care,” Gomes wrote in the email. “And SBUH is making a number of investments in our IT infrastructure to further advance our capabilities for a more integrated and comprehensive computer system for clinical care and electronic medical records.”

Gomes also hopes to expand projects and efforts that improve patient care, such as with teams that incorporate real-time data “aimed at reducing hospital associated infections” and “achieving patient safety goals.” 

She also wrote in the email that she wants to continue to improve opportunities for students at the SBUH training schools to “explore different pathways for clinical experience and innovative research opportunities,” such as hosting a psychiatric residency program at Stony Brook Eastern Long Island Hospital and the new Mastery in General Surgery Fellowship program.

“A great effort is expended in identifying new opportunities for students to play a role in successful initiatives geared toward a healthier Long Island population and developing the knowledge and skills necessary to improve care in an ever-changing health care market,” she wrote.

Kenneth Kaushansky, Dean of the Renaissance School of Medicine and Vice President for Health Sciences at the SBUH, along with Bernstein, decided to employ Gomes in the permanent position. He was also, in addition to former SBU president Samuel Stanley Jr., the one who promoted her to the interim position.

“She did a great job as chief operating officer of University Hospital,” Kaushansky said in a phone call with The Statesman. “And so after having served as the Interim Chief Executive Officer for a while, I decided — and Michael Bernstein, our interim president concurred — that we should just take that word interim out of her title.” 

Kaushansky values Gomes’ leadership in the healthcare field and the hospital’s contributions to the School of Medicine’s budget, which has a major impact.

“By developing quality in our hospital, Carol is sort of indirectly helping us train the next generation of physicians to be the best physician they possibly can be,” he said. “She really believes in our mission of training the next generation of healthcare professionals.”

Dr. Nicos Labropoulos, a professor at the School of Medicine, believes that Gomes is the right person for the job “because she’s been here for a long time, she’s been through the ranks, she’s had appropriate training and she understands the place pretty well.”

He also believes that Gomes’s appointment will prove beneficial for communication between the medical school and hospital.

“I think the communication between the hospital and medical school will be more vibrant, there will be more interaction and I think the students because of this will be favored,” he said.

A Statesman reporter approached several medical students at SBUH and emailed a few others, but all declined to comment on Gomes’s appointment. 

Stony Brook University’s undergraduate pre-med professional fraternity, Phi Delta Epsilon, and Stony Brook Pre-Med Society did not answer requests for comment before this article was published.