Eric Cruzen

Eric Cruzen, MD, MBA, is senior vice president and executive director of the Emergency Medicine service line at Northwell Health.

Dr. Cruzen is responsible for the operations of the 17 emergency departments across Northwell and has medical oversight over Northwell-GoHealth’s 51 Urgent Care Centers, Northwell’s Centralized Transfer Center, as well as a variety of other new business ventures in the Emergency Medicine space.

Dr. Cruzen is also board certified in clinical informatics and uses this expertise to continue serving as chief medical informatics officer for emergency medicine, where he is focused on seamlessly integrating advanced information technology in the clinical space.

In addition, Dr. Cruzen leads the solutions team within our Integrated Operations division, which is made up of a multi-disciplinary team of software architects, data scientists, and medical informaticists who create innovative solutions to complex problems in the space where technology and medicine intersect.

Dr. Cruzen joined the health system in 2003 as associate director of the South Shore University Hospital Emergency Department, and has held several important successive leadership positions. As founding chairperson of the Department of Emergency Medicine at Lenox Health Greenwich Village in 2014, he led the development of innovative models of emergency care and oversaw quality and the delivery of clinical services.

He is also the primary inventor of the patented software that used real-time data during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic to assist with the urgent transfer of patients between our hospitals to help ensure we most effectively managed our patient capacity.

Dr. Cruzen was also a member of the winning team in the 2019 Innovation Challenge for "Real Time Actionable Data" — software that can generate real time insights to drive change in healthcare from the system level to the bedside. Since winning the award, Dr. Cruzen and his team have used this technology to help with COVID-19 detection and testing, monitor staff and patient vaccinations, and manage hospital surge capacity.

He obtained an MBA from Hofstra and medical degree at the University of Missouri School of Medicine-Kansas City.