Up & Comers - 2016

Growing up in inner-city New Orleans, Andre Boyd knew what it meant to wait to receive care. Born to a teenage mother, he was raised by his grandmother who also was raising three other grandchildren. Without a primary-care physician, getting sick often meant 10- to 12-hour stays in an emergency room

"It was experiences like those that made me want to be a part of the healthcare industry," Boyd said.
 

Enduring long waits in the ER as a child helped lead Boyd to a career in healthcare.

He had been working for two years at TriStar Greenview Regional Hospital, Bowling Green, Ky., an HCA-owned hospital, as chief operating and staffing officer when he got a call from a recruiting firm asking him to take the role of senior vice president and CEO at Jackson North Medical Center in North Miami Beach. The opportunity represented a chance to help a community very similar to the one he grew up in.

Once he arrived at Jackson North, he faced a problem very familiar to him: long waits in the emergency department that averaged 90 minutes. "The hospital emergency department didn’t have the best reputation," Boyd said.

To turn things around, he ended a contract with a long-term-care management company, freeing up beds to add inpatient capacity and speed up admissions. He also worked with the hospital’s ED management firm to add staff as well as an observation unit. The average wait time fell to 10 minutes after five months, while ER volume rose by 21%.

Effective Oct. 31, Boyd will be using his leadership skills in a new role, as executive vice president of the hospital division at New Hanover Regional Medical Center in Wilmington, N.C. —Virgil Dickson