John Santopietro, MD, DFAPA, has been named Hartford HealthCare Behavioral Health Network’s first Physician-in-Chief. Dr. Santopietro will also be a Senior Vice President for Hartford HealthCare and will report to Jeff Flaks — similar to our model for other HHC Institutes. He will start on October 1.

In this role, Dr. Santopietro will build on the groundbreaking work of Harold (Hank) Schwartz, MD, Psychiatrist-in-Chief for the Institute of Living (IOL) and Vice President of Behavioral Health. As previously announced, Dr. Schwartz will step down from his leadership roles on September 30. He will remain part-time as Psychiatrist-in-Chief Emeritus at the IOL.

Dr. Santopietro most recently has been President and Medical Director of Silver Hill Hospital in New Canaan, Conn. Silver Hill is a nationally recognized, 124-bed hospital for the treatment of psychiatric and addictive disorders. Previously, he was Chief Clinical Officer for Behavioral Health and Chairman of the Department of Psychiatry at Carolinas HealthCare System in Charlotte, N.C., one of the nation’s largest not-for-profit healthcare systems.

He has also served as medical director for Outpatient Psychiatry at Middlesex and Day Kimball hospitals and at Ingraham Inc., a nonprofit mental-health agency in Portland, Maine.

Dr. Santopietro has a career-long track record of leadership that promotes and embraces servant-leadership, feedback and quality improvement based on standard work. In other words, he is a great fit for our H3W culture. He views his role with HHC as an opportunity to answer a call to rejoin people on the front lines of public health and community psychiatry — truly passion-driven work.

Working with Pat Rehmer, HHC Senior Vice President and President of the Behavioral Health Network, and her leadership team, he will focus on removing variation and improving quality wherever we serve the behavioral health needs of patients and families.

A Yale University graduate, Dr. Santopietro earned his MD at Northwestern University Medical School, completed an internship and residency in psychiatry at Cambridge (Mass.) Hospital and a fellowship at the Austen Riggs Center in Stockbridge, Mass., annually ranked among the top psychiatric hospitals in the country by U.S. News & World Report. A member of a number of professional organizations, he has published and lectured extensively, especially on the use of technology to enhance the delivery of behavioral health services.

Dr. Santopietro — with his wife, Kathy, and their three sons — is looking forward to relocating to the Hartford area and being closer to family.