Stella Onuoha-Obilor— Manager of Quality Management, VNSNY CHOICE

“CHOICE is Not a Workplace—It’s a Home”

“Stella is dedicated, and committed to her job, her staff, and to the success of all her team members. She is caring, gentle, flexible and respectful, and easily connects with others. Stella has a knowledge base that is ingrained, and integrated into her daily activities. She advocates for her staff when the need arises, and works with great passion to develop and implement performance improvement projects that are impactful on the members that we serve.”

You can hear the feeling in Stella Onuoha-Obilor’s voice when she says, “I am proud to be an advocate of the slogan ‘Every patient, every member, every time.’ I will always go above and beyond for our members, because we are their best ‘CHOICE.’”

As a manager of quality management for VNSNY CHOICE Health Plans, Stella collaborates with team members to establish goals for high-quality, cost-effective care-management services, and create methods for measuring and evaluating the overall quality of care. The all-important goal of reducing avoidable hospital admissions necessarily involves consistently improving this quality of care, and keeping everyone motivated—something Stella herself has no trouble with. “VNSNY CHOICE is not a workplace,” she says, “it is a home. The work-life balance here is second to none, and the senior leadership is culturally sensitive and empathetic with a high level of social and emotional intelligence. I see myself retiring with VNSNY.”

This love of what she does is why, any time CHOICE needs someone to step up, Stella jumps at the chance. “There is no winner without a winning team, and the team is more than the sum of the individuals,” she says. “While there is no ‘I’ in team, there is a ‘we.’” Stella has demonstrated her team spirit time and again. Once, when her department was short-staffed, she took work home and stayed up till the wee hours finishing performance improvement projects that needed to be submitted to the state the next day. “Words cannot express the passion I have for this job,” she says.