Tom Mihaljevic, MD, is CEO and President and Morton L. Mandel CEO Chair of Cleveland Clinic, one of America’s top hospitals (U.S. News & World Report). He has led the Cleveland Clinic Health System since January 2018.
He directs a $12.4 billion globally integrated healthcare system with a main campus, 22 hospitals and 226 outpatient locations, including facilities in Florida, Nevada, Toronto, Abu Dhabi and London. Cleveland Clinic has 72,500 caregivers worldwide, including 5,050 physicians and scientists.
Under Dr. Mihaljevic’s leadership, Cleveland Clinic’s mission is: Caring for life, researching for health, educating those who serve.
His vision is to make Cleveland Clinic the best place for care anywhere and the best place to work in healthcare.
Dr. Mihaljevic’s guiding principles are to treat patients and caregivers like family and Cleveland Clinic as our home. He strives to care for each community we serve, and to grow Cleveland Clinic in order to serve as many people as possible.
Prior to his current role as CEO and President, from 2015 to 2017 Dr. Mihaljevic served as CEO of Cleveland Clinic Abu Dhabi (CCAD), the first U.S. multispecialty hospital to be replicated outside of North America. He oversaw the facility’s opening and established its reputation for clinical excellence, research, education and patient experience.
2011 he was appointed Chief of Staff and Chairman of the Heart & Vascular Institute at CCAD. He led recruitment, hiring and training of the new hospital’s workforce.
Dr. Mihaljevic joined Cleveland Clinic in 2004 as a surgeon in the Department of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery. Previously he was director of the Cardiac Surgery Research Laboratory and an associate surgeon in the Division of Cardiac Surgery at Boston’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital. He also was Assistant Professor of Surgery at Harvard Medical School.
He has performed almost 3,000 operations over the course of his career, specializing in minimally invasive and robot-assisted procedures, valve replacement and repair, image-guided surgery and cardiac transplantation.
Dr. Mihaljevic has served on the editorial review boards for prestigious medical journals. He is the author or co-author of more than 140 articles in peer-reviewed publications, and is the author of textbook chapters on robotic and minimally invasive mitral valve surgery and valvular heart disease. In 2005, Dr. Mihaljevic received a patent for a novel system for minimally invasive cardiac surgery.
His research has focused on minimally invasive cardiac surgery, robot-assisted cardiac surgery, intracardiac imaging systems, and analysis of beating-heart intracardiac surgery, among other subjects. He has been an invited speaker at medical symposia and conferences worldwide.
Dr. Mihaljevic is the inaugural holder of the Morton L. Mandel CEO Chair, an endowment created by an October 2022 gift to Cleveland Clinic from the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Foundation to support leadership and innovation.
Dr. Mihaljevic is a member of the American Association for Thoracic Surgery, the American Board of Thoracic Surgery, the American College of Cardiology, the American Heart Association, the American Medical Association and the Society of Thoracic Surgeons.
He is a member of the GE Board of Directors, co-chairman of the Board of Directors of the US-UAE Business Council, a member of the East Coast Executive Summit, and a director on the boards of OneTen, the Greater Cleveland Partnership and the United Way of Greater Cleveland. He also serves on the Board of Trustees of the Musical Arts Association, the nonprofit that oversees The Cleveland Orchestra.
A native of Croatia and a U.S. citizen, Dr. Mihaljevic speaks English, German and Croatian.
