Catholic Health group names new leader amid expansion - Newsday

Catholic Health Physician Partners has named a new president as it expands into a growing number of locations on Long Island.

Dr. Avni Thakore took over the top job at the medical group this month, after serving since 2018 as its chief medical officer. The medical group is part of the Rockville Centre-based nonprofit Catholic Health network.

Thakore "has proven herself an effective executive," Dr. Patrick O'Shaughnessy, president and CEO of the parent Catholic Health network, said in a statement. As president of the network's medical group, he said, she will help create "even greater access through further expansion across Long Island and will continue to optimize the patient experience."

The group, which includes nearly 2,150 physicians at 100 locations, is opening more practices that offer both primary and specialty care in one location, said Thakore, a cardiologist.

"A lot of patients … who see a primary care physician also need to be seen and cared for by some other specialists, and if they're all located in one site, it's much, much easier for the patients to navigate their care," she said.

The group has opened multispecialty practices in Lake Success, Patchogue and West Babylon within the last two years, and it expects to open new facilities in Oakdale and Ronkonkoma next year, according to Catholic Health.

This facility in West Babylon, seen in 202, is part of the Catholic Health Physician Partners network. Credit: Newsday / David Reich-Hale

Catholic Health Physician Partners also is planning for locations in Bellmore, Centereach and Westbury, as well as on the South Fork, potentially in Southampton or Water Mill, Thakore said.

"We're taking a look at the community and the needs of our patients in that community," she said of the South Fork. "There were patients who used to come to us from Manhattan, especially in particular to St. Francis, and many of those patients are now living out east."

Board certified in cardiology, nuclear cardiology, echocardiography and internal medicine, Thakore is a fellow of the American College of Cardiology. She received her bachelor's and master's degrees at Yale University, graduating magna cum laude, and her medical degree at Harvard Medical School. Her training included an internship and residency in internal medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard and fellowships at Boston Medical Center and Massachusetts General Hospital.

She has served as the principal investigator for clinical trials, including a recent study on the cardiac effects of COVID-19 at St. Francis Hospital. Her work has been published in the Journal of the American Medical Association and the New England Journal of Medicine, among other publications.

Thakore, 46, grew up in New Hyde Park and lives in Roslyn with her husband, Dr. Satish Subbaiah, a neurosurgeon with Catholic Health, and their two children, ages 11 and 18.

"As a physician, one of the reasons we go into health care is we want to change people's lives and we want to change them for the better," Thakore said. Leadership roles, she said, "allow us to impact a much, much broader populations of patients. So for me, it was really that opportunity to have a broader impact as a leader that was really exciting."

Maura McDermott covers health care and other business news on Long Island.