Gottlieb to leave Partners HealthCare in 2015

Dr. Gary Gottlieb, CEO of Partners HealthCare, the largest healthcare provider in Massachusetts, will be leaving that position next year to join not-for-profit medical services provider Partners in Health as its new CEO, Partners HealthCare confirmed Saturday.

Gottlieb will start his new position July 1, 2015. In an email Gottlieb sent Partners HealthCare colleagues late Friday, he said, “This evening I informed the Partners HealthCare Board that I will be stepping down from my position as President and CEO as of July 1, 2015.

“Over the course of our lives, each of us is presented with opportunities that we have not anticipated. One such opportunity has presented itself to me,” he wrote.

Gottlieb has been with Partners HealthCare for 16 years, the past five as president and CEO.

Of his new employer, he said, “My association with Partners In Health extends back for more than a decade and I have served on its Board of Governors for the past eight years…They have poured the foundation for a mission that has drawn in some of the best and brightest clinicians, many in our institutions and our community, to care for people in some of the world's most isolated countries. It will be an honor to join their team and advance the healthcare that every person in the world deserves, but so many are desperate to have.”

Partners HealthCare's holdings include Massachusetts General, Brigham and Women's, and several other hospitals. Further expansion plans landed it in court where it was hammering out a deal with the state's attorney general to permit it to buy other hospitals.

Partners in Health began in 1987 to deliver medical care to Haiti and has since expanded its mission to several other countries to include Peru, Mexico, Rwanda, Russia and even the Navajo Nation of Native Americans in the United States.

Gottlieb ranks No. 11 on Modern Healthcare's 2014 list of the most influential physician executives, having made the list all 10 years it's been in existence.

Follow John N. Frank on Twitter: @MHJFrank