After an eight-month search, Montefiore Medical Center’s board of trustees chose a home-grown veteran executive to replace Spencer Foreman, MD, who is retiring at the end of this year after almost 22 years, as its president and chief executive officer.

Steven M. Safyer, MD, a native New Yorker who was trained at Montefiore’s academic arm, the Albert Einstein College of Medicine (AECOM), had been the Medical Center’s senior vice president and chief medical officer since 1998.

David Tanner, the chairman of Montefiore’s board, said in a statement that Safyer “is the best person to lead Montefiore into the future, particularly because he has played such a key role in making Montefiore the successful, innovative health system it is today.”

Safyer, 58, is also a professor of medicine and of epidemiology and population health at AECOM.

In 2006, Safyer was named founding chairman of the Bronx Regional Health Information Organization, an independent not-for-profit group established to create a system of sharing data among a wide range of health care institutions in the borough.

Safyer has written and lectured widely on healthcare issues affecting prisoners and began his tenure at Montefiore in 1985 in its Rikers Island Health Division. He was that department’s executive director from 1990 to 1993.

In the press release announcing his appointment, Safyer said he “look[s] forward to working with my colleagues at Montefiore, AECOM and with our local healthcare partners. Together, we will advance a coordinated, comprehensive agenda to transform the health of this region and create a national model for healthcare reform.”

Foreman hailed the decision.

“I am delighted with Steve Safyer’s appointment to the presidency,” he said in the statement. “Steve is thoroughly familiar with every important institutional issue, and he has the maturity, judgment and experience to lead Montefiore to new levels of achievement. I wish him the very best and pledge my assistance in any way I can be of help.”

The appointment was also praised by Kenneth Raske, president of the Greater New York Hospital Association and SEIU Healthcare chairman Dennis Rivera, a union chief who forged an unusually close union-management alliance with Foreman.

“Dr. Safyer is an instrumental part of Montefiore’s success and we look forward to working with him for universal healthcare,” Rivera said in the statement.

Safyer will officially take office on Jan. 7.