2009 NETWORKING® MAGAZINE’S DAVID AWARD HONOREE.

AKRAM BOUTROS, M.D. FACHE

President, Long Island American Heart Association

A champion of hospitals’ evolution as learning organizations, Dr. Akram Boutros has served for more than 15 years as a progressive leader building clinical programs and successfully managing hospital operations. During ten years of service at South Nassau Hospital, he led a team that transformed the institution into the fastest-growing hospital of its size in New York State.

In 2007, he was named Executive Vice President and Chief Administrative Officer, St. Francis Hospital, The Heart Center—a position that dovetailed with his interest in providing care for people with heart disease and stroke. Boutros practiced internal medicine for 12 years, the last three as a diagnostician, serving physicians and patients by focusing on difficult diagnoses.
After receiving his medical degree from SUNY Health Sciences Center at Brooklyn in 1990 and completing his residency in internal medicine at Winthrop-University Hospital, Boutros’s goal was to become an academician. He received a faculty appointment at Stony Brook Hospital, while concurrently accepting the position of Associate Program Director of Winthrop’s Residency Program. Boutros soon realized that his greatest value and impact would be in healthcare administration. He went on to manage the Winthrop internal medicine residency and training programs for 81 residents—raising the number from 50. He reorganized the program to reflect the need for primary care and ambulatory medicine, and prepared the first house staff manual and residency recruitment material.

“It gives me tremendous pride to see how my former students and residents are doing when I travel around the country,” remarks Boutros, who was responsible for the education and training of over 400 physicians.

Boutros was recruited at age 35 by South Nassau Hospital as its first full-time Medical Director and was later named first Vice President for Medical Affairs. Recognizing the hospital’s loss of market share, he shepherded its re-creation, dubbed the Renaissance Project. “We had to completely change the image of the hospital, its core values, and its business structure,” notes Boutros, who commends “the skills, time, effort and teamwork of the folks I was fortunate to work beside” in achieving reduced bureaucracy, improved quality and profitability. When he interviewed at South Nassau, he says, “the entrance was hidden behind houses.” But during his tenure, “a modern, sleek 180,000-square-foot pavilion, including a 32,000-square-foot Cardiac Center, has become the new face of South Nassau to the surrounding communities.”

Most notably, Boutros partnered with Johns Hopkins School of Medicine to bring to New York its research project called Atlantic C-Port, under which “South Nassau Hospital became the first hospital in the state to perform acute angioplasty without an open heart surgery program,” says Boutros. With his relentless advocacy, the hospital also became the first in New York State to successfully establish an elective angioplasty program without on-site surgery. By convincing the Department of Health that it was time to permit hospitals to do acute and elective angioplasty, and helping develop a roadmap for hospitals, Boutros improved the care delivered to many patients—most significantly, those living in rural upstate communities.

As a member of the Health Organization of New York State’s Quality Council in 2003, Boutros led the charge to get every hospital to adopt the Institute for Health Improvement’s 100,000 Lives initiative to decrease deaths due to hospital mistakes. He and his South Nassau team meaningfully reduced medical errors and helped ensure patient safety. Throughout the country, 150,000 lives were saved that year.

Boutros expanded South Nassau’s graduate residency program in family practice to include surgery, podiatry, psychiatry, pathology, pediatrics and OB/GYN. “The programs allow physicians to share their clinical knowledge with students, while the students challenge and keep them up to date,” says Boutros, adding, “and the community receives the benefit of additional services provided by students and residents.”

At St. Francis Hospital, Boutros aimed “to help St. Francis become the country’s most recognized heart hospital” by partnering with the highest quality physicians, totally engaging staff and providing unparalleled services to patients. He notes that during his two years of service, St. Francis was been named as one of the Best Heart Hospitals in the country by U.S. News and World Report and, among all private sector businesses across the board, it was the only hospital in the state to be chosen by its employees as one of the top 30 companies to work for.
A graduate of Harvard Business School’s Advanced Management Program, Boutros says he worked with top executives from L.L. Bean, Warner Brothers, TIAA-Cref and international companies like Mitsubishi, spending “three months retooling ourselves for the next leadership role.” Boutros served as a lecturer for Adelphi University’s School of Business MBA program and Harvard Business School, and is an advisor to multi-national and Fortune 500 executives. A popular keynote speaker, Boutros is the author of numerous articles on topics such as leadership, employee recognition, forecast modeling in healthcare, and some articles that are a bit unusual, like hardwiring trust into an organization.

Boutros serves on the Regional Policy Board of the American Hospital Association, advocating for the health care system to transform treatment of illness into maintenance of wellness. He is president of the American Heart Association, Long Island chapter, and past board member of Helen Keller Services for the Blind. In 2007, he was certified as a Fellow, American College of Healthcare Executives (FACHE), the premier credential in healthcare management. The recipient of numerous honors, he was named a 2008 Healthcare Hero by Long Island Business News. A St. John’s University graduate with a bachelor’s in biology and chemistry, Boutros was awarded the President’s Medal for Outstanding Achievement. He says, “At St. John’s, I began seeing the joy that comes from serving others.”

A native of Cairo, Egypt, Boutros’s family moved to Queens when he was 13 in large part because of his desire to enter the medical field. Glen Cove residents, he and his wife Suzanne have three teenage daughters, Jasmine, Shannon and Tess. Boutros is a voracious reader of periodicals, saying they “give not only explanations of what happened in science and medicine, but also ideas on how to move forward.”

NETWORKING® January 2009