Akram Boutros, MD, FACHE

Akram Boutros, MD, FACHE

In his five years as the President and CEO of MetroHealth, the public health system in Cleveland, Akram Boutros, MD, FACHE, has galvanized political leaders, entrepreneurs and the public around supporting community-wide health care many had taken for granted.

With his unwavering commitment to delivering high-quality health care to everyone in Cuyahoga County, Akram Boutros has achieved what many thought was impossible. Under his leadership, The MetroHealth System went to market on its own credit in 2017 and sold $946 million in bonds to rebuild its hospital, revitalize its main campus and resurrect its West Side neighborhood.

That is just one piece of the unprecedented transformation of Cuyahoga County’s public health care system Dr. Boutros has piloted since he arrived at MetroHealth in 2013.

In the five years since, he has created an Integrated Delivery System that provides care at more than 20 community health centers, four emergency departments, four clinics in Discount Drug Mart stores, five MetroExpressCare locations and nine pharmacies. Those are in addition to MetroHealth’s main-campus hospital, which is home to the area’s most experienced Level I Adult Trauma Center, a Level II Pediatric Trauma Center, the only adult and pediatric burn center in the state and Ohio’s only Ebola Treatment Center.

Now a more than $1 billion operation, MetroHealth and its caregivers treat patients at more than 1.4 million visits a year.

In the past five years, The MetroHealth System has also created more than 1,300 additional jobs, sent doctors into a dozen Cleveland schools and constructed an $82 million addition to its Critical Care Pavilion. Annual operating revenues have grown from $783 million in 2012 to $1.13 billion in 2017. And last year, MetroHealth returned $231 million – 21.3 percent of its operating expenses – to Cuyahoga County in free care and community benefit programs. That is 2.3 times the national average.

An internist with a 25-year record of successful hospital leadership at academic medical centers, community hospitals and specialty hospitals, Dr. Boutros cultivates personal relationships throughout the hospital system and the community along with an atmosphere of personal excellence for everyone he works with.

A graduate of St. John’s University, SUNY Downstate Medical Center and Harvard Business School’s Advanced Management Program, he has led organizations through strategic repositioning, operational redesign, clinical and physician integration and population-health and risk-contracting programs. He sees collaboration with other health systems, organizations and local residents as a key driver in fulfilling MetroHealth’s mission of leading the way to a healthier community.

His community service includes chairing the American Heart Association 2015 Cleveland  Heart Ball, the most successful in the city’s history, and serving on the boards of:

• America’s Essential Hospitals
• American Hospital Association Section for Metro Hospitals Governing Council
• Cleveland Ballet
• Cuyahoga Community College Foundation
• Global Center for Health Innovation
• Greater Cleveland Food Bank
• Greater Cleveland Partnership
• The MetroHealth Foundation
• Select Assurance Captive
• Unify Project
• United Way of Greater Cleveland
• Vizient

Some of his recent awards include being named:

• Recipient of the 2018 George V. Voinovich Municipal Service Award from The Cuyahoga County Mayors & City Managers Association
• Recipient of the 2018 Richard H. Adler Community Leadership Award from the American Jewish Committee Cleveland
• Recipient of the Stokes Leadership Award
• The American Red Cross 2016 Community Leader
• One of the “183 Nonprofit Hospital and Health System CEOs to Know in 2017” by Becker’s Hospital Review
• EY 2015 Entrepreneur of the Year for Community Impact in Northeast Ohio
• A 2015 nominee for Modern Healthcare’s 100 Most Influential People in Healthcare
• One of Northeast Ohio’s Power 150 by Crain’s Cleveland Business
• Inside Business Magazine’s Power 100 list

Dr. Boutros was inducted by Cuyahoga County Executive Armond Budish

Click on the white arrow to watch the video as Master of Ceremonies Chris Tanaka, news anchor of Channel 19, introduced Cuyahoga County Executive Armond Budish who inducted Akram Boutros MD, the President and CEO of MetroHealth, the public health system in Cleveland, into the Cleveland International Hall of Fame.