UH Ahuja CMO Uses Communication and Collegiality to Build Robust Hospital Systems

UH Clinical Update | March 2026

When UH Ahuja Medical Center was first under construction, Jessica Goldstein, MD, would drive by on Interstate 271, noting the progress as she traveled to her emergency medicine position in Akron. She resolved then that she would be a part of this impressive new UH medical center in Beachwood.

Jessica Goldstein, MD (left) and UH Ahuja employee.

“It was very clear that this is the place I wanted to work,” she says. “It was an opportunity for me to give back to our community, five minutes from where I grew up, and be part of making the emergency department the best it could possibly be.”

Fast-forward to 2026, and Dr. Goldstein is now entering her fifth year as UH Ahuja’s Chief Medical Officer, after previously serving seven years as the hospital’s original Medical Director of the Emergency Department. She says her decision to join UH is reinforced every day by the clinical excellence and compassion of her colleagues. And it’s no surprise. Those qualities of UH caregivers were evident when she was doing internship projects at UH Cleveland Medical Center back in high school, she says.

Early Experiences at UH

“From an early age, I was exposed to incredible UH clinicians and teachers,” she says. “Dr. Robert Stern taught me physiology and how cystic fibrosis leads to pulmonary hypertension. Dr. James Goldfarb welcomed me into the in-vitro fertilization lab and helped me to publish my first article.  I learned from the best!  From these summer experiences, I realized that I loved being at the bedside helping patients. I also saw the dedication and determination required to be a physician.” 

Education and Background

Dr. Goldstein completed her undergraduate degree in Medical Anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania and earned her medical degree at Weill Cornell Medical College. Following residency training in Emergency Medicine at University of Illinois at Chicago Medical Center, she completed fellowship training in ultrasonography at MetroHealth Medical Center. She then spent three years at MetroHealth’s Level 1 Trauma Center and three years as ultrasound program director at Akron General. Dr. Goldstein also recently earned a master’s degree in Patient Safety and Health Care Quality from Johns Hopkins University.

Challenges as Preparation

In 2018, Dr. Goldstein co-founded the Emergency Medicine Quality Network for the health system’s Emergency Medicine service line, with a mission to deliver world-class care consistent with the Institute of Medicine’s six dimensions of quality to all patients seen across 15 hospitals. Then when COVID-19 struck in 2020, Dr. Goldstein played a lead role on the clinical operations team for the Emergency Medicine service line.  She received a UH Art Anton Fellowship in 2020 to support rising aspirational UH physician leaders.

Both quality and operational experiences, as well as her expertise as an emergency medicine physician and training from the Anton fellowship, have informed her tenure as UH Ahuja CMO, she says, where she’s charged with managing patient access, quality and safety, patient experience and cultivating and supporting future hospital leaders.

Protecting Hospital Access

Managing these considerable duties requires creativity and constant communication, Dr. Goldstein says. For example, she says she views the all-important length of stay (LOS) metric as equal part quality and operational, given its crucial importance in access to care.

“For all these initiatives, you need to be able to communicate why each one is important,” she says. “It’s not just a metric. It’s important to have optimal length of stay because access to the hospital is a community imperative. We need to be open to the patients that need our care in a timely manner.”

How does it all come together? Dr. Goldstein says it’s a combination of declaring priorities, developing a plan and continuously learning and modifying until you get it right.

“For length of stay, we have daily meetings of care coordinators, hospitalists, internal medicine APPs and nurse leaders to help the team work through barriers,” she says. “Hospitalists identify patients who can be discharged early in the morning, and special discharge nurses monitor the board to look for active opportunities.”

“A lot of it is about problem-solving and relational coordination so you build trust in the team. We learn from each other and celebrate when we get it right,” she adds.

And it’s working. In 2025, Dr. Goldstein achieved the LOS target at Ahuja (O:E 1.12) by optimizing the delivery of care models, according to UH Ahuja Chief Operating Officer Bill Benoit and East Market CMO Don DeCarlo, MD. In their nomination of Dr. Goldstein for Dr. Megerian’s “Dinner with the Doc” honor, they write that, “Jessica's passion and commitment to high-quality patient care is second to none. She consistently communicates the goals for patient care with her colleagues in a collaborative manner and effectively implements the feedback to achieve the desired outcomes.”

Managing a busy hospital means there will always be new problems to be solved. Dr. Goldstein says it all comes down to your approach.

“It’s important to be a solution-finder and have a positive attitude,” she says. “We encourage each other to stay curious and approach challenging situations with humility, asking, “What can we learn from this?’”

To nominate a physician for this honor, click here for the Dinner with the Doc Nomination Form. The next deadline is May 8.