HL20: Aurelia Boyer—Analyzing Data, Reducing Costs

In our annual HealthLeaders 20, we profile individuals who are changing healthcare for the better. Some are longtime industry fixtures; others would clearly be considered outsiders. Some are revered; others would not win many popularity contests. All of them are playing a crucial role in making the healthcare industry better. This is the story of Aurelia Boyer, RN, MBA.

This profile was published in the December, 2012 issue of HealthLeaders magazine.

 "I try to find the right doctor or nurse or administrator—to partner with them—to make those kinds of things really happen, and I think it energizes the IT staff, because they're pushed closer to the actual hospital business than they would otherwise."

The demands keep coming: Decrease length of stay. Reduce admissions. Produce good quality measures for all to see, even as an industry struggles to agree upon which quality measures are most important.

But given a visionary CIO with a passion for data accuracy, accompanied by some physician champions, progress is possible. At New York-Presbyterian Hospital, astute use of data aggregation cut the number of deep-vein thrombosis (DVTs) resulting from venous thromboembolisms (VTEs) by nearly 50% in a 12-month period.

"It's not as simple as you think it's going to be when you start," says senior vice president and CIO Aurelia Boyer RN, MBA. "How are we going to decide who's at risk for DVTs? With a great advocate in a particular physician, we started looking at those things using Amalga."