diff --git a/base-notebook/Dockerfile b/base-notebook/Dockerfile
index 40e3b221..b94cbef1 100644
--- a/base-notebook/Dockerfile
+++ b/base-notebook/Dockerfile
@@ -70,7 +70,7 @@ RUN sed -re "s/c.ServerApp/c.NotebookApp/g" \
 # This healtcheck works well for `lab`, `notebook`, `nbclassic`, `server` and `retro` jupyter commands
 # https://github.com/jupyter/docker-stacks/issues/915#issuecomment-1068528799
 HEALTHCHECK  --interval=5s --timeout=3s --start-period=5s --retries=3 \
-    CMD python /etc/jupyter/docker_healthcheck.py || exit 1
+    CMD /etc/jupyter/docker_healthcheck.py || exit 1
 
 # Switch back to jovyan to avoid accidental container runs as root
 USER ${NB_UID}
diff --git a/base-notebook/docker_healthcheck.py b/base-notebook/docker_healthcheck.py
old mode 100644
new mode 100755
index b187eabf..8b756c55
--- a/base-notebook/docker_healthcheck.py
+++ b/base-notebook/docker_healthcheck.py
@@ -1,16 +1,19 @@
+#!/usr/bin/env python3
+# Copyright (c) Jupyter Development Team.
+# Distributed under the terms of the Modified BSD License.
 import json
 import os
+from pathlib import Path
 
 import requests
 
 # A number of operations below delibrately don't check for possible errors
 # As this is a healthcheck, it should succeed or raise an exception on error
 
-runtime_dir = "/home/" + os.environ["NB_USER"] + "/.local/share/jupyter/runtime/"
-file_list = os.listdir(runtime_dir)
-json_file = [s for s in file_list if s.endswith(".json")]
+runtime_dir = Path("/home/") / os.environ["NB_USER"] / ".local/share/jupyter/runtime/"
+json_file = next(runtime_dir.glob("*.json"))
 
-url = json.load(open(runtime_dir + json_file[0]))["url"]
+url = json.loads(json_file.read_bytes())["url"]
 url = url + "api"
 
 r = requests.get(url, verify=False)  # request without SSL verification