Striving for higher quality while lowering costs
Cynthia has extensive experience guiding large healthcare organizations through significant change, improving productivity and patient satisfaction while boosting the bottom line. Known as a strategic thinker, she has recently focused on payment reform and accountable care.
As President and founder of Ambres Healthcare Consulting, Cynthia facilitated merger discussions between two multibillion-dollar health plans and the restructuring of large provider systems. As Senior Vice President and Chief Medical Officer of a large BCBS plan in New York, she led a cardiac surgical care evaluation program that challenged the physicians to think differently about the care process, driving major improvements in the quality of these services for more than two million people.
Cynthia’s turnaround skills were in evidence when, as Executive Vice President and Chief Medical Officer for Kaleida Health, she helped eliminate operating losses and achieve profitability in just 24 months, recognizing medical costs and utilization savings of more than US$60 million annually while improving care quality and coordination.
She also introduced one of the first virtual ICUs in the country allowing senior clinicians to oversee care provided across the system. Under Cynthia’s leadership, Lifetime Health Medical Group made the leap to an incentive-based compensation model. Coordination of care and patient satisfaction greatly increased with the introduction of innovations such as group visits, in-clinic pharmacist education, an EHR, acupuncture and other complementary medicine modalities.
A regular speaker and panelist, she presented at the 2012 National Managed Market Summit in Miami and is a contributing author to Establishing a Company-wide Vision for Success: Leading Executives on Updating Your Company’s Long-term Strategy.
Cynthia has a MD from Mount Sinai School of Medicine, an MS from NYU Wagner School of Public Health and is a fellow of the New York Academy of Medicine. She served as Chairman of the department of emergency services at Beth Israel Medical Center in New York City.