Dr. Leslie Jurecko will become Cleveland Clinic's chief safety and quality officer, effective June 15.

Dr. Jurecko will oversee enterprise safety and quality initiatives for the Cleveland Clinic health system and will report directly to Cleveland Clinic Chief Clinical Transformation Officer James Merlino, M.D. In addition to her leadership role, she will continue to practice as a pediatric hospitalist with Cleveland Clinic Children’s.

“It is our promise to always deliver the safest, highest quality care for our patients. Nothing is more important,” said Cleveland Clinic CEO and President Tom Mihaljevic, M.D. “We are delivering on that promise by sharing checklists, universal protocols and best practices across the organization and with Dr. Jurecko’s leadership, we look forward to continuing this momentum.”

Dr. Jurecko served as senior vice president of Quality, Safety & Experience for Spectrum Health, where she oversaw patient safety, quality, patient experience, employee safety, medication safety, infection prevention, patient relations, pastoral care, ethics and clinical analytics. She led the consolidation of Spectrum Health’s safety and quality strategy and infrastructure across the system, and has executed on a high reliability operating model. She also has served as the Medical Director for Quality and Safety for Helen Devos Children’s Hospital, within Spectrum Health from 2013 to 2017.

“I am looking forward to joining the Cleveland Clinic team and will continue to support the already-strong foundation that has been put in place across the health system for high quality and safe care,” Dr. Jurecko said.

Dr. Jurecko was assistant professor at Michigan State University, College of Human Medicine.

Dr. Jurecko earned her Master of Business Administration degree from Grand Valley State University, Seidman College of Business and a bachelor’s degree from the University of Michigan. She received her medical degree from Wayne State University. She completed her pediatric residency at Northwestern University’s Children’s Memorial Hospital.

In 2020, Becker’s Hospital Review named Dr. Jurecko one of the top 50 patient safety experts to know, 2020. She was listed as an honoree for Crain’s Detroit Business 2020 Notable Women in Health Care. She was the guest of Honor at Inforum’s Inner Circle Event in 2019. Modern Healthcare named Dr. Jurecko as an Up & Comer and she was named to Grand Rapids Business Journal’s Influential Women in 2018.