Dr. Shukri Khuri; surgeon helped improve care at nation's VA hospitals

SHUKRI F. KHURI

When Boston heart surgeon Shukri F. Khuri led the Veterans Administration's efforts to improve surgical care nationwide 20 years ago, he asked for help from a previously overlooked source - nurses.

"A lot of surgeons can have a god complex, but he was such a humble person," said Anita Garrison, surgical quality management coordinator for the Memphis VA Hospital. "In a bureaucratic system, he made every nurse who did this feel valued."

Dr. Khuri, whose work helped lead to a dramatic drop in mortality rates and fewer complications, died from a brain tumor Friday at his Westwood home.

He was 65.

He led efforts to create the National Surgical Quality Improvement Program, a data collection and measurement system now used in all VA medical centers and 215 top hospitals nationwide.

In the first seven years of using the program, death rates within 30 days of surgery fell about 27 percent, and complication rates fell 45 percent, according to 2001 data from the VA.

"He could have taken a lot of lucrative jobs in surgery. He chose to stay with the VA and work with veterans and help a lot of people," said his son, Naseem of Westwood.

Dr. Khuri had worked for the VA in Boston since 1978. He was chief of surgery for 20 years for the VA Boston Healthcare System and VA hospitals in Brockton and West Roxbury.

He also was vice chairman of the surgery department at Brigham and Women's Hospital and a past president of the American Heart Association's Westwood chapter.

Born in Jerusalem, Dr. Khuri graduated from American University of Beirut and trained in medicine at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore and the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn. In the late 1970s, he was recruited to work for the VA and Harvard Medical School.

In remarks he made in 1998 upon receiving the Frank Brown Berry Prize in Federal Medicine, Dr. Khuri said he chose the VA over private-sector hospitals for its "very appreciative group of wonderful patients" and the chance to use its top research facilities.

"No wonder my Brigham colleagues now consider my rise to the rank of full professor at Harvard at the age of 42 as 'meteoric.' I owe that totally to the VA," Dr. Khuri said.

He did not live to accept a new award that would have made him most proud, his family said. This week, he was named the recipient of the 2008 Ernest Amory Codman Award for improvements in safety of care to the public.

The award was created to honor the former Mass. General surgeon who was known as "the father of outcomes measurement."

Dr. Khuri was a visionary, said Majed Tomeh, a friend and chief executive of Waltham-based QCMetrix, which helps private hospitals implement the National Surgical Quality Improvement Program.

"He had remarkable persistence in all of his fields of endeavor and an unswerving optimism that allowed him to create the things he did," Tomeh said.

Dr. Khuri's research also helped lead to the development of the first metabolic tool for the online assessment of myocardial protection during cardiac surgery.

He was the son of Vera (Zeidan) Khouri of Walpole and the late Fayez Khouri.

He was married to his college sweetheart, Randa (Domian) for 39 years.

"I was drawn to his humility, his joie de vivre, his honesty and goodness," Randa said. "He was just a good man who believed in humanity."

Dr. Khuri was an Episcopalian Palestinian who was devoted to groups promoting peaceful resolution of conflict in the Middle East.

His daughter Hania Khuri-Trapper of Westwood described him as a devoted father and "faithful Christian" who tolerated her many questions as a young girl about faith and science.

"I was always questioning everything. I would say how can you be a scientist and follow all the rituals in church. He would say, 'I believe in the essence of Christianity, which is love and forgiveness.' He never believed there was any reason for loss of life, ever," she said.

In addition to his wife, son, daughter, and mother, Dr. Khuri leaves a brother, Rajai Khouri of London; another daughter, Maya Khuri Plotkin of Westwood; and four grandchildren.

A memorial service will be held at 3 p.m. Friday in Trinity Church in Boston.

Burial will be private.