A. Laurie Shroyer – Vice Chair for Research and Professor of Surgery, Department of Surgery; Principal Investigator, ROOBY Trial, Department of Veterans Affairs Cooperative Studies Program, Northport Veterans Affairs Medical Center
I love quality management, research and teaching. My research efforts include conducting comparative effectiveness analyses – such as, comparing the different approaches used by heart surgeons. Key decision-makers (clinicians, health care program managers and policy makers) can use this data to guide their decisions, as an evidence-basis to improve the future quality and efficiency of patient care.
I have been recognized nationally and internationally for my publications related to risk adjusted clinical outcomes – that is, the statistical analytical approaches used to level the playing field to equitably compare providers, health care programs and patient sub-populations. My research also includes evaluating new diagnostic tests/biomarkers; assessing new innovations; advancing state-of-the-art quality management tools; and supporting evidence-based decision-making.
As the director of Stony Brook Medicine’s medical student research program (the Scholarly Concentration Program Research Track), I am actively engaged in educational scholarship and research of our medical students. I have sought to improve the quality of our undergraduate medical educational programs and to establish, with the Dean’s office, team program-based quality assurance reporting templates.
For more than 25 years, I have received continued funding from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) and the VA Cooperative Studies Program (CSP); as an example of my VA-based research, the Randomization On and Off Bypass clinical (ROOBY) trial was recently re-funded by VA CSP for expanded follow-up. The ROOBY trial was the first U.S.-based, multi-center, randomized controlled trial to evaluate off-pump coronary artery bypass graft (CABG) procedures. Compared prior to (2002) and after (2012) ROOBY’s published findings, the U.S. off-pump CABG rates declined from 23% to 17%. Most recently, the off-pump procedural rate appears to have plateaued, with off-pump procedures representing only ~13.5% of 2015 U.S.-based CABGs performed.
I was a graduate program director for two Ph.D. programs myself, having trained more than 120 doctoral, masters, certificate and medical students. For BMI, I’m looking to mentor students who are curious about how to utilize databases to support evidence-based decision-making – which in the longer-term can ultimately improve the quality, efficiency and cost-effectiveness of medical care.