Recognizing and celebrating physician excellence is a growing strategy to improve well-being and engagement across health systems. How do you know when a strategy becomes one with organization-wide culture? When its success naturally inspires broader adoption and expansion.
Northwell Health’s “The Truly Awards” program is a prime example. Launched in 2019, the program has evolved from a strategic initiative into a cultural touchstone, so much so that it inspired a parallel recognition program for nurses.
The depth of this cultural shift is evident in the numbers: In 2024, over 1,200 physicians—one in four of Northwell’s employed physician population—were nominated by their peers and colleagues.
Northwell Health is part of the AMA Health System Member Program, which provides enterprise solutions to equip leadership, physicians and care teams with resources to help drive the future of medicine.
The spark of an idea
Even in a health system committed to its physicians, the challenge in a complex, high-stakes environment is to ensure every individual feels personally and profoundly valued. The program’s inception wasn't a top-down corporate initiative. It was born from listening to physicians express a desire for something more—a feeling of being personally recognized for the tireless work they pour their lives into.
The idea for this program began in response to physician feedback collected from annual engagement surveys and dedicated listening events. When doctors expressed a desire for more recognition, Northwell Health’s Physician Partners’ Engagement Committee, which focuses on increasing and improving physician engagement, put their heads together to solve this problem, and The Truly Awards was the answer.
“Our physicians are so multifaceted, and they are excelling in so many different domains, but we saw a gap in recognizing their successes,” said Lee Richstone, MD, a urologic oncologist at Northwell Health. Dr. Richstone served as the former chair of this committee until 2025. He is also chair of the department of urology and director of laparoscopic and robotic surgery at Lenox Hill Hospital.
To develop the awards themselves, the committee identified the different qualities that define physician excellence.
“Our next step was to consider what are the key ingredients that make doctors special—what makes them feel good about themselves and their work,” said Dr. Richstone.
The awards were designed around five key qualities that define physician excellence, compassionate care, innovation and research, leadership, mentorship, and inclusion. These pillars align strategically with Northwell Health’s core values, which are “truly compassionate, truly innovative, truly ambitious, truly together and truly inclusive.
It’s more than just a plaque
Fundamentally, the purpose of The Truly Awards is more than the "red-carpet" event. The deeply human mechanism at its core is the nomination process. The committee understood that the most powerful recognition comes not from a generic plaque, but from the specific, heartfelt words of a trusted colleague.
The program’s "secret sauce" is that every single physician who is nominated receives a collection of personal stories and testimonials submitted on their behalf.
“When nominees receive those words from their colleagues, they truly feel appreciated and valued to know that someone took the time to put pen to paper with thoughts that they have about them,” said Nicole J. Berwald, MD, an emergency physician and chair of the Physician Partners Engagement Committee for Northwell Health. She is also vice president and chief medical officer at Northwell’s Staten Island University Hospital.
This provides all Northwell team members with the opportunity to nominate physicians to be recognized and culminates with an event celebrating those who embody the organization’s core values. For example, for Vera Feuer, MD, a child and adolescent psychiatrist, one colleague wrote: “Her ongoing commitment and excellence in service administration and leadership have been demonstrated through her innovative program development. It is because of this that adolescents throughout Long Island have access to quality and immediate mental health care, regardless of their ability to pay, exemplifying Northwell's mission."
For recipients, this honor often reflects shared success. Randi H. Goldman, MD, a recipient of the 2025 Truly Rising Star Award, said “this award represents the collective work of my entire team, and I am so incredibly grateful to work alongside them.”
A celebration of stories
To elevate the experience, the awards ceremony is intentionally designed as a celebration of stories, not just successes. The focus is on revealing the human narrative behind a physician's work. For the audience, this creates a chance to connect with the person behind the white coat, reinforcing the organization's shared purpose and the profound impact of their collective work.
Importantly, the event also shines a light on all nominees.
“We’ve done a good job of keeping our eye on impacting and touching as many physicians as we possibly can,” said Dr. Richstone. “We try hard for this not to be just about the five winners and the 30 finalists. We really try to ensure that we're celebrating everyone who's nominated because every single physician needs to be recognized more.”
The ripple effect
Since its launch in 2019, The Truly Awards has helped bring together a large, complex organization by highlighting how individual contributions strengthen and grow the entire health system.
“This is incredible just in terms of what it represents culturally, with thousands of employees celebrating the work of doctors and telling stories that are incredibly moving,” said Dr. Richstone.
“We’re an organization of more than 104,000 team members—including over 20,000 physicians,” Dr. Richstone added. “And this has turned out to be a marvelous way to get thousands of people involved … in moving the needle and changing the culture around recognition.”
“Both internally at a site and across the organization, it offers the opportunity for physicians and non-physicians to get to know many of our wonderful doctors better and learn the things they do every day and beyond,” said Dr. Berwald. “Many people have found it inspirational to hear the stories of the work that our physicians do in these different spaces … while also providing awareness of other hospitals in the organization through its physicians.”
Over time, The Truly Awards have become embedded in Northwell’s culture, reinforcing and communicating core organizational values continuously.
"We don't just look at The Truly Awards as the one day we celebrate the recipients… we use it as a progressive road map of celebration and recognition,” said Dr. Berwald.
This success has started a ripple effect. Inspired by the program, Northwell leadership launched The Nursing Truly Awards program last year. The impact is also deeply felt by the award recipients.
“This award is so meaningful because it honors the work our teams have done to build innovative services that provide access to mental health care for youth,” said Dr. Feuer, recipient of the 2024 Truly Leadership Award and associate vice president for school mental health at Northwell.
“The Truly Awards are at the core of our recognition program, but we do other programs as well,” said Dr. Berwald. “We also recognize physicians on work anniversaries, birthdays and other important events.
“We also have other ways of communicating, which sometimes is more personal communication from a leader,” she added. “But a lot of it is about listening to what your team wants, what feels good to them, and then starting with a program that can touch many people.”
Northwell Health is deeply committed to understanding what physicians value and tailoring recognition accordingly. To mirror this success, Drs. Richstone and Berwald recommend other health systems customize recognition for what physicians deem most important, combining opportunities to gather with personal gestures.
Ultimately, The Truly Awards prove that even in one of the nation's largest health systems, the individual can be seen, their story can be told and their impact can be celebrated in a way that resonates on a deeply human level.
