What are the red flags for Philip O. Ozuah, MD, PhD?

AHA Dossiers Power Map About

Philip O. Ozuah, MD, PhD

Trustee (term end not announced)

President & CEO | Montefiore Einstein (Montefiore Medicine)

Last verified November 4, 2026

8 Red Flags

Affiliations

•President and CEO of Montefiore Medicine, the parent of Montefiore Health System and Albert Einstein College of Medicine, branded Montefiore Einstein; CEO since 2019 after serving as system president and, before that, EVP and COO.
•Former Professor and University Chairman of Pediatrics at Einstein and Physician-in-Chief of the Children's Hospital at Montefiore.
•AHA Board of Trustees: elected in August 2024 to fill a one-year unexpired term starting Jan. 1, 2025, per the AHA press release; he remains on the AHA's published board roster under President and CEO Steve Walsh.
•Director of The Cigna Group since May 2023, a seat on the board of one of the largest commercial insurers that negotiates rates with hospitals like his own.
•Director of Organon & Co. since 2021, where he chairs the Portfolio Development Committee and sits on the Talent Committee.
•Board member of the New York City Police Foundation and the Federal Law Enforcement Foundation, per his Organon biography.
•MD from the University of Ibadan, Nigeria; master's in education from USC; PhD in educational leadership from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

Financial / Compensation

•Montefiore Medical Center's FY2024 Form 990 (EIN 13-1740114, filed Nov. 14, 2025) reports $5.91 billion in revenue, $5.62 billion in expenses and $288.6 million in net income for that entity.
•Schedule J breakdown (FY2024, Montefiore Health System and four related returns): base salary $5.35M, bonus and incentive $7.09M, other reportable $4.20M, retirement and deferred $17,000, nontaxable benefits $33,767; total $16.69M. Bonus and incentive pay was 42% of the total.
•The same filing reports Ozuah's FY2024 total compensation at $16.69 million: $0 from the hospital itself, $16.64 million from related organizations and $50,767 in other compensation.
•His reported total rose from $9.91 million in FY2022 to $16.36 million in FY2023 and $16.69 million in FY2024, a 68% increase in two years.
•Montefiore Health System posted an operating loss of $120.9 million (-1.4% margin) on $8.8 billion in operating revenue in 2025, versus $164.7 million in operating income in 2024; the 2025 net loss was $56.3 million.
•The 2024 surplus rested on one-time government money: FEMA reimbursement fell from $254.9 million in 2024 to $1.2 million in 2025, and Montefiore said that without federal and state funds its 2024 margin would have been -2.4%.
•In Q1 2026 the system lost $104.9 million from operations (-4.5% margin) amid the nurses' strike, and through June 30, 2026 it had lost $69.1 million (-1.5% margin) on $4.7 billion in revenue.
•KBRA revised Montefiore Medical Center's outlook downward in 2026, citing debt service coverage falling to 1.29x from 3.4x and days cash on hand falling to 58 from 80; management targets structural balance only in 2027.

Lobbying and Political

•Montefiore Medical Center lobbies Congress through Welsh Rose LLC, reporting $110,000 in each quarterly LDA filing from 2025 through Q3 2026, roughly $440,000 a year and $330,000 for the first three quarters of 2026.
•Its 2025-2026 filings list the One Big Beautiful Bill Act's implementation, Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement, site-neutral payment, hospital price transparency, the 340B program, NIH funding, earmarks and, from Q4 2025, FEMA reimbursement.
•CFO Colleen Blye publicly implored elected officials in May 2025 to keep 'partnering' with Montefiore on funding, noting about 85% of its patients have government coverage.
•In 2026 Montefiore said it was working with New York State leaders to keep Managed Care Organization tax revenue flowing to hospitals.
•As an AHA trustee, Ozuah helps govern the trade group that leads opposition to site-neutral payment and defends the 340B program, the same issues his own system lobbies on.
•No personal federal political contributions by Ozuah were identified in this review.

Revolving Door

•Sits simultaneously on the board of The Cigna Group, a payer, and the AHA board, the provider lobby that fights payers over reimbursement and prior authorization.
•Holds a pharmaceutical board seat at Organon while his health system lobbies on the 340B drug discount program, which pits hospitals against drugmakers.
•Montefiore has repeatedly hired former Bronx elected officials, a pattern City & State New York reported on in 2024.

Home System Record

•Montefiore's charity care at cost was $99.0M (latest hospital tax returns).
•Montefiore has 379 340B contract pharmacy arrangements registered with HRSA (OPAIS registry, Sept. 29, 2026).
•About 15,000 NYSNA nurses at Montefiore, Mount Sinai and NewYork-Presbyterian struck beginning Jan. 12, 2026, the largest and longest nurses' strike in New York City history; Gov. Hochul declared a state of emergency.
•Montefiore settled on Feb. 9, 2026 with a contract adding $15,000 to base wages over three years and running through December 2028; the three systems spent about $100 million on replacement nurses during the strike, per the Greater New York Hospital Association.
•Striking nurses accused management of 'Bronx disinvestment' and corporate greed, contrasting Bronx emergency-department crowding with suburban investment.
•In May 2026 Montefiore notified 12 utilization review nurses that their jobs would end July 12, 2026, as it automated the work with AI software; NYSNA filed a class grievance on June 1.
•The Lown Institute's 2022 analysis of 2019 data found Montefiore Medical Center had a $76 million Fair Share surplus, the largest among 21 New York City hospitals studied, meaning its community spending exceeded its estimated tax-break value.
•Montefiore is a 340B participant and lists the program among its federal lobbying issues; no public accounting of how 340B savings reach patients was found.

Litigation and Scrutiny

•On Jan. 28, 2026, House Ways and Means Chairman Jason Smith and Rep. David Schweikert sent letters to Montefiore Medical Center and UChicago Medicine over New York Times reporting that the hospitals transplanted organs from American donors into wealthy foreign patients, demanding documents by Feb. 10, 2026 under threat of subpoena.
•Smith said hospitals that prioritized foreign nationals over Americans 'should have their tax-exempt status terminated'; no public resolution of the inquiry has been reported as of November 2026.

Red Flags

Ozuah's reported pay rose to $16.69 million in FY2024 while the system he runs swung to a $120.9 million operating loss in 2025 and asked lawmakers for more public money.

All of his compensation is reported through related organizations, with $0 shown at the hospital entity, which makes his pay harder for the public to trace on any single filing.

The 2018 'early retirement' payout of roughly $9 million, reported by the New York Post, went to an executive who did not retire but was promoted to CEO.

Montefiore is under a congressional inquiry into whether it gave American-donor organs to wealthy foreign patients, with the committee chairman openly raising revocation of tax-exempt status.

He serves as a director of Cigna while sitting on the AHA board, a direct conflict between payer fiduciary duty and provider-lobby governance.

Montefiore's 2024 'profit' depended on $254.9 million in FEMA money; stripped of public subsidies the system has not covered its costs since, and its credit outlook has been cut.

A record nurses' strike in 2026 followed by AI-driven nurse job cuts months later undercuts the system's public posture of investing in frontline care.

His AHA term status is opaque: AHA announced a one-year term for 2025 and has announced no re-election, yet he remains on the published roster.

Pattern Summary

Ozuah runs an $8.8 billion Bronx safety-net system that lives on government payers, federal disaster money and state tax transfers, and he is paid $16.7 million to do it. As the subsidies ebbed in 2025 the system swung to a $120.9 million operating loss, cut its credit outlook, endured a record strike and began automating nurse jobs, while his pay kept climbing. He sits on the boards of an insurer (Cigna), a drugmaker (Organon) and the hospital lobby (AHA) at once, and his flagship hospital faces a congressional inquiry that put its tax exemption in question.

Philip O. Ozuah, MD, PhD

Red Flags

Sources and Citations