NEW YORK: Indian American physician Dr. Nirav R. Shah has been appointed by New York Governor-elect Andrew Cuomo, as state Health Commissioner.
Cuomo announced the appointment recently and it will become effective upon the Governor-elect assuming office.
“We continue to find talented and dedicated individuals ready to help reshape the state of New York and make it work for the people once again,” said Governor-elect Cuomo. “New Yorkers will be well-served by this tireless and capable group of people. I thank them for their service to the state and their hard work, and I look forward to working with them all.”
Cuomo describes Dr. Shah as a general internist who is an “expert in use of systems-based methods to improve patient outcomes, a leading researcher in use of large scale clinical laboratories and electronic health records to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of care, and a nationally recognized thought leader in the very methods needed to transition to the future of lower-cost, more patient-centered, health care for the 21st century.”
Nirav R. Shah, MD, MPH will be nominated to serve as the Commissioner of the Department of Health. Dr. Shah is Attending Physician at Bellevue Hospital Center, Associate Investigator at the Geisinger Center for Health Research and Assistant Professor of Medicine in the Section of Value & Comparative Effectiveness at NYU Langone Medical Center.
As a general internist who has worked in a New York hospital, Dr. Shah expects to improve the health of vulnerable as well as the general population; he conducts research and development to improve care both in the public hospital system of New York City and in the rural, aging population of central Pennsylvania’s Geisinger Health System.
Dr. Shah is originally from Buffalo, and is an honors graduate of Harvard College, received MD and MPH degrees from Yale School of Medicine, was a Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholar at UCLA, and a National Research Service Award Fellow at NYU. He serves on the editorial boards of medical journals, has published over 90 peer-reviewed articles, and has received over $4.5 million in research funding. He lives in Battery Park City with his wife Nidhi Shah, and two children.
President of the Healthcare Association of New York State Daniel Sisto, commented, “We commend Governor-Elect Cuomo for his appointment of Dr. Nirav Shah as the next Commissioner of Health. Dr. Shah’s understanding of vulnerable populations, his expertise in designing efficient models of care delivery, and his background in clinical quality research and health information technology should help New York State work with stakeholders to redesign Medicaid and improve health care delivery. We need a new approach that avoids yet another round of across-the-board Medicaid cuts. We look forward to working with the incoming Commissioner and the Department to establish a lower-cost, higher-quality system.”
India Post News Service
