Medical Director — Safety, Quality and Patient Experience – Ohio Market

Cleveland Clinic is seeking an experienced, dynamic Medical Director to drive, influence and enhance safety, quality and patient experience across the organization’s Ohio region. With our Main Campus, 14 regional hospitals and more than 100 ambulatory locations throughout Ohio, Cleveland Clinic delivers a patient-first healthcare experience, impacting patients, caregivers and communities across the state. A leader in this role plays a key part in delivering on our mission to be the best place to receive care. 

The Medical Director – Safety, Quality and Patient Experience (SQPE) serves as the SQPE liaison to Market Leadership, providing clinical leadership and direction for SQPE programs. This leader collaborates closely with leaders across Clinical and Operational Improvement, markets, institutes and shared services to drive aligned strategies. The Medical Director – Safety, Quality, and Patient Experience will co-develop and execute strategic plans to enhance the patient experience as a market differentiator and growth driver and oversee clinical operations of the SQPE team. This role supports alignment with enterprise professional practice standards across the market and institutes.    

The Medical Director – Safety, Quality and Patient Experience reports directly to the Vice President of Safety, Quality and Patient Experience and has a matrixed relationship to the Market President. 

Candidates must be trained physicians with active board certification and enthusiastic leaders focused on creating clinical protocols for safe, effective, high-quality patient care. They should have a minimum of ten years of experience in a similar healthcare leadership position, leading multidisciplinary teams, and a proven track record of working effectively with all levels of clinical and non-clinical caregivers.   

A caregiver who excels in this role will: 

• Inform the selection of enterprise SQPE OKRs and ensure alignment of SQPE priorities across clinical areas through shared accountability with local leaders. 

• Align messaging and strategy with peers (e.g., Nursing Quality) and SQPE leadership to drive a unified One Cleveland Clinic focus and collaborate with Market leaders to promote consistency and system integration. 

• Identify and prioritize regulatory requirements and risks and collaborate with stakeholders to proactively address and remediate as needed. 

• Co-develop and execute strategic plans to enhance the patient experience as a market differentiator and growth driver. 

• Leverage data and feedback from patients and complaint systems to advance safety and high reliability initiatives. 

• Support standardized measurement and optimization to eliminate health care disparities. 

• Maintain expertise in the healthcare environment, including regulatory trends, improvement methodologies, and emerging best practices. 

• Track and communicate national trends in healthcare quality and reporting. 

• Partner with Market Quality Assurance and Performance Improvement teams to monitor, evaluate and drive improvements aligned with SQPE priorities. 

• Lead continuous improvement initiatives targeting safety, quality and patient experience metrics. 

• Proactively communicate SQPE initiatives to staff and patients to promote engagement and awareness. 

• Serve as an internal consultant and physician content expert in accreditation, regulatory affairs, patient experience, and communication design. Lead regulatory survey efforts (e.g., Joint Commission, ODH, AHCA). 

• Collaborate with Market SQPE leaders to integrate standardized best practices, patient feedback, research and service standards across sites, reducing unnecessary variation. 

• Support alignment with enterprise professional practice standards across the Market and Institutes. 

• Ensure compliance with laws, accreditation standards and professional guidelines. 

• Coordinate with OPSA, CMOs and Department Chairs to ensure appropriate use and compliance with OPPE, FPPE, and Peer Review processes for all provider types. 

• Act as the SQPE physician lead on the Patient Survey Appeals and local Grievance Committees and support leader rounding and collaboration with medical staff to advance patient experience initiatives. 

• Track hospital, submarket and market-level ranker/rater performance and share insights with leaders to guide improvement strategies. 

• Collaborate with Nursing, Medical Staffs, Administration and Institute leaders to develop, implement and update patient care policies, procedures and protocols. 

• Promote interdisciplinary collaboration, psychological safety and reduction of power distance to achieve high reliability and performance improvement. 

• Translate service excellence, patient experience and patient relations concepts into actionable, empathic behaviors. Help identify and promote communication skills that strengthen service orientation among caregivers. 

• Contribute to crisis management efforts at the organizational level. 

• Review recommendations (e.g., CMS, Consensus-Based Entities, and Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality) and share implications with market leaders. 

• Coordinate with other departments as needed on initiatives such as safety event management, value-based care and centers of excellence. 

Minimum qualifications for the ideal future caregiver include: 

• A medical degree (MD, DO) with active board certification 

• Ten years of experience in a clinical practice setting, including experience in a similar healthcare leadership position leading multidisciplinary teams 

• Proven track record of working effectively with all levels of clinical and non-clinical caregivers, with a history of driving results 

• Demonstrated ability to collaborate effectively, develop and implement initiatives and achieve results within a complex, matrixed environment 

• Demonstrated experience working with medical staff and nursing to organize and drive improvement efforts in safety, quality and experience initiatives 

• Experience managing a regulatory or accreditation risk survey 

• Complex medical, financial, business, educational, research and administrative decision making 

• Effective application and coaching of lean thinking, structured problem solving and other improvement methodologies incorporating the core tenant of respect for people 

• Ability to support and leverage a mature operating system based on the Cleveland Clinic Improvement Model in the SQPE team and across the organization 

• Demonstrated leadership and interpersonal skills, including proven ability to collaborate with physician, nursing and executive leadership 

• Strong written, presentation and influence skills, ensuring cohesive communication of complex materials to a wide variety of constituents 

• Ability to lead and drive organizational change while role modeling Cleveland Clinic values: quality and safety, empathy, teamwork, integrity, inclusion and innovation 

Preferred qualifications for the ideal future caregiver include: 

• Certification in Healthcare Quality, Patient Safety, Accreditation, Patient Experience or Patient Safety 

• Ability to form and maintain healthy teams 

• Service in national societies or organizations 

Our caregivers continue to create the best outcomes for our patients across each of our facilities. Click the link and see how we’re dedicated to providing what matters most to you: https://jobs.clevelandclinic.org/benefits-2/