Kevin John O'Leary

Kevin is Chief of the Division of Hospital Medicine, Associate Chair for Quality in the Department of Medicine, and Medical Director for Quality for Northwestern Memorial Hospital. He is the founding Director of the Northwestern Medicine Academy for Quality and Safety Improvement (NM AQSI), a professional development program to train leaders in quality improvement. In 2015, AQSI received the Leape Ahead Award from the American Association for Physician Leadership.

Kevin is the author of peer reviewed publications related to hospital medicine, medical education, healthcare quality, and patient safety. He is a Deputy Editor for the Joint Commission Journal on Quality and Patient Safety. He also serves as principal investigator of the Redesigning Systems to Improve Quality for Hospitalized Patients (RESET) project, an AHRQ funded study which provides mentored implementation to help sites redesign clinical microsystems to improve patient outcomes.

Kevin helped develop Northwestern's hospitalist program, now one of the largest such programs in the nation. Hospitalists are experts in hospital-based patient care, providing general medical care to inpatients and coordinating the management of their complex medical issues. Northwestern’s inpatient medical services are well known for innovative features designed to improve patient care, including unit-based physician teams, unit nurse-physician co-leadership, and structured interdisciplinary rounds.