Just over two weeks ago, Judith Wolfe, MD, stepped into her new role as chief medical officer at UH St. John Medical Center in Westlake, Ohio, part of Cleveland-based University Hospitals.
Already, she is putting key learnings from her previous role as associate chief experience officer at Cleveland Clinic into action, consistently connecting with front-line staff to establish connections and build teams. This, she says, is the foundation to make progress on all other priorities, which include unburdening the clinician workforce by eliminating operational efficiencies and enhancing the quality of care.
"I think ensuring that their time isn't wasted and that they're having the impact that they hope to have is crucially important and that's really about empowerment and connection," she said.
Becker's recently connected with Dr. Wolfe to talk about her immediate priorities in the new role, quality and safety advancements and advice for emerging physician leaders and more.
Editor's note: Responses have been lightly edited for clarity and length.
Question: Thinking ahead to the summer of 2025, what are some of the top goals and priorities you hope to have to have made measurable progress on as CMO?
Dr. Judith Wolfe: I think every CMO in the country has essentially the same goals. We're all focused on quality, safety, patient experience and operational efficiencies. As I'm starting to learn my role, and I've only been in this job for the last two weeks — that's really where I'm focusing my attention. Coming from my background at the Cleveland Clinic, particularly over the last year, we really learned more about ease to get care. Ease to get care was one of the questions we embedded on our survey, and we really were trying to assess the impact of operational efficiencies — things like throughput to the patient experience. I really learned a lot about how those things impact everything else downstream for patients. I really want to wrap my arms around what's great here, what's working well, and what we can do better. That's where my focus is right now.
Q: University Hospitals is a leader when it comes to making quality and safety work more proactive and actionable. Can you share an example of what that looks like in action?
JW: One of the key things that I really appreciate about my team here is their obsession with accountability around things like line days. We have a huddle every single morning where every single patient with a central line or a foley is discussed: Why do we have that line and what is the plan for that line? If the line can't be removed, what are we doing to ensure that the patient has the safest outcome? Are we doing [chlorhexidine gluconate] baths? Are we getting a consult from a specialist to see if that can be removed and transition to an alternative? So there's accountability that is very high and is daily for every patient that's impacted. I was just amazed when I came here with the control around those situations; how the nursing leadership and the physician leadership come together to ensure the best outcome for every patient.
The other thing that we're doing is we're really deep diving readmissions and understanding the circumstances around each one. We have standard work as chief medical officers around a selected essentially three projects that we've selected on the basis of the needs of the hospital. Then we are partnering with our continuous improvement, our operational efficiency colleagues who are process engineers and project management teams to really build those out in partnership with our quality leaders to ensure that our patients get the best chance of having a durable discharge.
Q: Burnout levels have improved, though remain high among physicians. How do you plan to advance support for the physician workforce at UH St. John Medical Center?
JW: That's really twofold. What I found in my role at the Cleveland Clinic was really being present and visible was crucially important to drive patient experience. I'm taking that learning and I'm bringing it here by being physically present on all the units and with all the teams. I'm somebody who likes to drop by and have ad hoc conversations with my team members. I'll just drive up and not interrupt patient care, of course, but have those ad hoc conversations: "Hey, how are things going? Are you having problems? What can I do to develop a solution for whatever is bothering you — how can I make that better?" So that's a big piece of it is just being present and willing to dig in and get your hands dirty as the CMO.
The other piece of that is convening teams. I have a relatively newer hospital medicine leadership locally, and I have an established ED team. What I'm doing to kind of bring those teams together is to include them on some projects that are in the interest of both groups, and I think bringing people to the table to connect and to build those trusting relationships is crucially important.
Q: Can you share a piece of advice for aspiring physician executives — What's a key learning from your experience in leadership roles?
JW: I think visibility, accountability, and just being a person. I've worked with a variety of different leaders through my tenure, and the people that I'm role modeling myself against, they were people who were extremely visible and hands on. For instance, Rebecca Starck, MD, who is the CMO at Cleveland Clinic Avon hospital is somebody that I've admired and have wanted to model in my career because she's someone who is everywhere all the time. During COVID when I was a staff doc in the emergency department, I saw her every single shift. She would come down, make sure we had what we needed, check in with the physicians, check in with nursing, and she was deeply involved. She wasn't somebody that you only saw on Teams meetings. She was someone who was physically present, and when she was there with you, you felt like you had 100% of her whole attention. Similarly, I'm working with Kim Togliatti-Trickett, MD, she is the west market chief medical officer for UH and I report to her. With Kim, she similarly is cut from the same cloth. She's physically present. She's supportive and she's very personable and understanding. Those are the people that I look up to that I am trying to model my own behavior and actions around.
It's about relationships. Fundamentally, everything we do, every bit of influence we have is about relationships and building trust between teams … That's really how you build your strong matrix.