LocationSt. Louis, MO 63110

Scheduled Hours40

Position SummaryThe Chief Quality and Safety Officer is the principal physician executive for quality, patient safety, high reliability, and performance improvement at Barnes Jewish Hospital and WashU Medicine. Working in close partnership with the Barnes-Jewish Hospital President and executive team, BJC HealthCare leaders, and WashU Medicine clinical and academic leadership, the CQO develops and executes a unified quality and safety agenda that advances safe, equitable, evidence-based, and patient-centered care.

The CQO will translate the strengths of the WashU Medicine and Barnes-Jewish Hospital partnership into measurable improvement. This includes creating shared priorities, clarifying joint accountability, accelerating adoption of best practices, and ensuring that quality and safety initiatives are integrated into clinical operations, faculty practice, education, research, and strategic planning. The role has dual reporting relationships to the BJH President and the WashU Medicine Vice Chancellor for Clinical Affairs.

Job Description

Primary Duties & Responsibilities:

Barnes-Jewish Hospital

• Serve as the senior WashU Medicine physician partner to Barnes-Jewish Hospital executive, clinical, nursing, and operational leaders for quality, safety, and high-reliability performance.
  • Co-develop and execute a single, integrated quality and patient safety strategy for Barnes-Jewish Hospital in partnership with BJC HealthCare and WashU Medicine leadership.
  • Establish shared priorities, governance, decision rights, and accountability across Barnes-Jewish Hospital and WashU Medicine to ensure coordinated execution and sustained results.
  • Serve as a primary liaison to Barnes-Jewish Hospital quality and safety committees, medical staff leadership, and executive governance forums, promoting transparency, timely escalation, and alignment.
  • Build strong working relationships with department chairs, division chiefs, service line leaders, nursing leaders, and hospital operations to embed quality and safety into daily clinical practice.
  • Partner with Barnes-Jewish Hospital leadership in BJC system quality initiatives, helping translate system standards into local action and share successful practices across the system.

Quality Strategy and Performance

• Collaborate with hospital leadership to position Barnes-Jewish Hospital as a national leader in quality and safety among academic medical centers through exceptional outcomes, reliable care, and disciplined performance improvement.
  • Identify quality and safety priorities, standards, performance targets, and improvement plans aligned with Barnes-Jewish Hospital, BJC HealthCare, and WashU Medicine strategic goals.
  • Ensure accurate measurement and reporting of required federal, state, accreditation, and private quality metrics.
  • Implement an integrated performance review process that enables hospital and faculty leaders to evaluate results, identify variation, remove barriers, and act on opportunities.

Patient Safety and High Reliability

• Lead programs to prevent harm, reduce medical errors, strengthen risk-management practices, and improve the reliability of clinical care.
• Partner with Barnes-Jewish Hospital and BJC HealthCare leaders on serious safety event response, root cause analysis, corrective action, and system-level learning.
• Advance high-reliability principles and ensure that safety behaviors, leader rounding, escalation practices, and learning systems are embedded in daily operations.
• Establish evidence-based patient safety education and training in collaboration with hospital, medical staff, nursing, and academic partners to include Graduate Medical Education.

Clinical Quality Improvement and Assurance

• Partner with clinical departments and Barnes-Jewish Hospital operational teams to establish evidence-based standards, protocols, pathways, and care guidelines.
• Lead multidisciplinary initiatives to reduce unwarranted variation, improve reliability, and strengthen outcomes across inpatient, procedural, ambulatory, and transitional care settings.
• Ensure consistent improvement methodology engages frontline teams, faculty, trainees, nursing, and operational leaders.
• Promote implementation science, scholarship, and dissemination of quality and safety innovations arising from the academic medical center partnership.

Data, Analytics, and Digital Transformation

• Develop a shared quality analytics strategy for Barnes-Jewish Hospital and WashU Medicine, including common definitions, data governance, transparent reporting, and trusted performance measures that aligns to the health system.
• Advance dashboards, predictive models, real-time safety monitoring, and actionable clinical intelligence that support leaders and frontline teams.
• Partner with technology, informatics, and operational teams to optimize Epic and responsibly deploy AI and digital tools in support of quality and patient safety.
• Use patient outcomes, process measures, disparities data, and external benchmarks to guide priorities and evaluate impact.

Regulatory, Accreditation, and External Benchmarking

• Provide physician executive leadership for provider components of regulatory readiness, accreditation performance, and compliance activities affecting Barnes-Jewish Hospital.
  • Monitor external ratings, accreditation outcomes, and industry benchmarks, and coordinate action plans with hospital and faculty leaders.
  • Ensure that regulatory and accreditation expectations are translated into durable clinical and operational practices rather than episodic readiness activities.

Leadership, Culture, and Engagement

• Foster a culture of transparency, psychological safety, collaboration, accountability, and continuous learning across Barnes-Jewish Hospital and WashU Medicine.
• Engage physicians and other clinicians as active partners in improvement by connecting quality priorities to professional practice, patient outcomes, education, and scholarship.
• Mentor and develop current and future leaders in quality, patient safety, and performance improvement.
• Communicate quality and safety performance clearly to executive leaders, governing bodies, medical staff, faculty, frontline teams, and external stakeholders.

Working Conditions:
Job Location/Working Conditions

• Normal office environment

Physical Effort

• Typically sitting at a desk or table

Equipment

• Office equipment

The above statements are intended to describe the general nature and level of work performed by people assigned to this classification. They are not intended to be construed as an exhaustive list of all job duties performed by the personnel so classified. Management reserves the right to revise or amend duties at any time.

Required Qualifications

Education:

M.D., D.O., Or Equivalent Degree From An Accredited Medical School

Certifications /Professional Licenses :

No specific certification/professional license is required for this position.

Work Experience:

Progressive Leadership Responsibility (5 Years), Clinical Practice (10 Years)

Skills:

Not Applicable

Driver's License:

A driver's license is not required for this position.

More About This Job

Required Qualifications:

• MD or DO degree with current board certification through an appropriate American Board of Medical Specialties member board.
• Ten years of clinical practice, preferably in an academic medical center, with at least five years of progressive leadership in quality, safety, or performance improvement.
• Demonstrated success leading complex, multidisciplinary quality and patient safety initiatives within a hospital or health system.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Eligibility for medical licensure and clinical privileges as applicable.
• Certified Professional in Healthcare Quality (CPHQ) and/or Certified Professional in Patient Safety (CPPS) preferred.
• Experience building effective partnerships between hospital operations and an academic physician organization or medical school.
• National reputation and a record of scholarship, teaching, or thought leadership related to quality and safety preferred.
• Experience with Epic and advanced clinical analytics highly preferred.
• Executive leadership and influence in complex, matrixed healthcare environments.
• Ability to create alignment across hospital, health system, and academic stakeholders with distinct structures and shared goals.
• Ability to translate strategy into measurable, sustained clinical and operational outcomes.
• Strong analytical judgment and data-driven decision-making capability.
• Exceptional communication, facilitation, negotiation, and executive presence.
• Expertise in change management, improvement science, and organizational transformation.
• Commitment to collaborative leadership, shared accountability, and the success of the Barnes-Jewish Hospital and WashU Medicine partnership.

Preferred Qualifications

Education:

No additional education unless stated elsewhere in the job posting.

Certifications/Professional Licenses:

Certified Professional In Healthcare Quality (CPHQ) - National Association for Healthcare Quality, Certified Professional in Patient Safety (CPPS) - American Institute for Healthcare Management

Work Experience:

No additional work experience unless stated elsewhere in the job posting.

Skills:

Analytical Thinking, Communication, Data Driven Approach, Decision Making, Executive Leadership, Facilitation, Influencing Skills, Leadership Management, Negotiation, Organizational Transformation, Professional Judgement, Teamwork, Work Collaboratively

GradeG00

Questions

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Accommodation

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All qualified individuals must be able to perform the essential functions of the position satisfactorily and, if requested, reasonable accommodations will be made to enable employees with disabilities to perform the essential functions of their job, absent undue hardship.

Pre-Employment ScreeningAll external candidates receiving an offer for employment will be required to submit to pre-employment screening for this position. The screenings will include criminal background check and, as applicable for the position, other background checks, drug screen, an employment and education or licensure/certification verification, physical examination, certain vaccinations and/or governmental registry checks. All offers are contingent upon successful completion of required screening.

Benefits StatementWashington University in St. Louis is committed to providing a comprehensive and competitive benefits package to our employees. Benefits eligibility is subject to employment status, full-time equivalent (FTE) workload, and weekly standard hours. Please visit our website at https://hr.wustl.edu/benefits/ to view a summary of benefits.

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