Ultimate CEO Insights: Cleveland Clinic Florida’s Barsoum on his professional growth (Video)

Editor’s Note: This is the fifteenth in a weekly series highlighting the Business Journal’s 2018 South Florida Ultimate CEO Awards honorees. The award recognizes the area’s top CEOs, highlighting the breadth of talent and leadership across our unified tri-county region. We’ll feature at least one of these chief executives weekly as a lead-up to the Sept. 27 awards program at The Ritz Carlton, Fort Lauderdale.

Wael Barsoum

CEO and President, Cleveland Clinic Florida

Age: 49

Birthplace: Amman, Jordan 

Residence: Fort Lauderdale

A practicing and renowned orthopedic surgeon, Wael Barsoum is equally praised as CEO at Cleveland Clinic Florida.

He oversees 11 sites across southeast Florida, including the new 73,000-square-foot Coral Springs Family Health Center that opened this summer. Deals in Martin and Indian River counties will add 45 sites to the Weston-based organization’s footprint.

He still thrills at the delivery of health care, whether it’s his own success in orthopedics, how his team encourages patients to improve their health or visiting the OR to watch surgery. 

“I just marvel at what’s going on,” he said. “I get to play undercover boss. I spend time in each hospital to see how things are running and where we have opportunities to improve and what best practices we can apply across the organization. Even though we’re known for taking care of the sickest patients in the world, to be able to talk about well care and keep people out of hospitals, that’s a major accomplishment and it’s really a reinvention of the organization.”

Professionally, what drives you? I take incredible pride in what we do every day, taking care of patients and making individual lives better. The fact that making an improvement in one person’s life can affect hundreds of people is awesome.

What’s your finish line? One of the things I’ve tried to do as a father and as a health care provider is to enjoy and appreciate where I am right now at this moment. There already are plans for the Cleveland Clinic to get bigger and play a bigger role in Florida and the United States. But I don’t know that there’s truly a finish line. We will always be pushing ourselves to get better. When you get to the point where you’ve accomplished it, then it’s time to hang it up and go home.

As a CEO, what’s your greatest strength? Weakness? Building teams. Recognizing what each person can do and how the strength of the team is so much greater than the strength of the individual parts. My greatest weakness, sometimes, is appreciating just how good things are right now. I’m always trying to push for a little more. I sometimes need to take a step back and realize how much we’ve accomplished.

What do you do in pursuit of your own professional growth? I’m very involved as an orthopedic surgeon. Last year, I got six or seven more patents innovating what I do. I’m very involved academically. I publish papers, and I’m editor-in-chief of the Journal of Hip Surgery. I attend courses, and I’m always trying to be better as an administrator. 

Why would I want to work for you? I’m a pretty empowering person. I like for people on my leadership team to feel safe to think outside of the box. I like to surround myself with people who are really smart and good at what they do – and let them do it. Each person has their strengths, and I expect them to use them.

What’s been your greatest professional accomplishment? I’m a member of both the Hip Society and the Knee Society. Those organizations are limited to the 100 most influential hip surgeons and knee surgeons in the world. For me, it’s top of the line as a joint surgeon.

What would you go back to tell your 21-year-old self? Relax. It’s going to be awesome. 

What centers you? Probably my faith and my family. I saw a great little sign recently: “Wake up, say a prayer, go hustle.” You have to kind of do it all.

Personal note? I play in a rock band called Skin and Bones. It’s all caregivers from Cleveland Clinic, some in Florida, some in Cleveland. I started it when I was a resident. Our motto is: “The more you drink, the better we sound.”