Pete Velez
Senior Vice President, Queens Health Network and Executive Director
Elmhurst Hospital Center, Elmhurst, NY
Biography
Pete Velez is the Senior Vice President of the Queens Health Network (QHN), the major healthcare provider in the borough of Queens New York. Part of the New York City public hospital system, QHN is comprised of two acute care facilities, Elmhurst Hospital Center and Queens Hospital Center, and over 20 family and school-based health centers. QHN provides over a million ambulatory care visits and sees over 40,000 admissions per year.
As Sr. VP of the Queens Health Network, Pete Velez has provided the leadership that made technology the cornerstone of this organization’s strategy for change and galvanized the organizational will to successfully embed technology into the fiber of the organization. Mr. Velez has focused QHN on technology not only as a means to effect change and generate performance improvements, but also as a means of building the critical infrastructure for transforming the delivery of care, changing the way the organization functions, and establishing the foundation for future growth and innovation. These factors are seen as critical to maintaining QHN’s ability to continuously sharpen our competitive edge and pursue performance excellence.
Under Pete Velez’s leadership the Queens Health Network has successfully implemented a clinical information system (winner of 2002 Davies Award); implemented voice recognition and PACS systems in Radiology; and introduced robotics in Pathology, Pharmacy and the O/R. Clinicians at our two facilities and our twenty community-based medical centers can now access our electronic patient record system, enter orders, view patient history, results, assessments, medications, and radiological and EKG images from nearly 3,000 devices in the network, and have access to library resources, knowledge data-bases and the Internet.
Mr. Velez has led this implementation and use of technology to effect change and advance QHN’s ability to improve the delivery of care, patient safety, and the health outcomes of our patients and community. The implementation of our clinical information system has transformed the way care is provided.
The investment in technology has also provided the structure for innovation. The Queens Health Network has been able to develop unique public/private partnerships with community physician groups with the system as a base for sharing clinical information on co-managed patients. Additionally, the technology has provided a base for the development of a Smart Card application, wherein the patient’s clinical record is summarized on a chip on the patient ID card. Healthcare providers in our community will have card readers to quickly access summaries of the patient’s last work-up whenever patients present their ID cards.
During his tenure Mr. Velez has directed the $250 million dollar major modernization of Elmhurst Hospital Center and the construction of a modern $200 million 250-bed facility at Queens Hospital Center and has produced unmatched net profit margins in an era when healthcare has been plagued by hospital closings, reduced subsidies, stagnant reimbursement rates, and high numbers uninsured. Mr. Velez has served in a variety of leadership roles at the Health and Hospital’s Corporation including interim President and Chair of the Council of Executive Directors and Medical Directors, a position he still holds, where he was instrumental in engaging physicians in transforming care from process to outcomes.
In 2003, Health Information Management and Systems Society (HIMSS) selected Mr. Velez for their national IT CEO of the Year award in recognition of his innovations in management including the enterprise-wide use of technology to improve patient safety, organization efficiencies, and productivity,
In addition to his executive and HHC board related responsibilities, Mr. Velez is also actively involved on the Boards of the The Institute of Healthcare Improvement, the National Association of Public Hospitals and the Greater New York Hospital Association. He also serves as a member of the Robert Wood Johnson National Advisory Committees on Pursuing Perfection and Pay for Quality.
Pete Velez was born in Puerto Rico and came to New York as a young boy where he and his family settled in East Harlem. He holds a Masters of Science with distinction in organization leadership from Mercy College and has been an Associate Clinical Professor at City College of New York since 1996.