Dr. Michael Leonard

Co-Chief Medical Officer

Dr. Leonard is a Principal at Pascal Metrics Inc. and co-leads its Clinical Group with Dr. Allan Frankel.

Dr. Leonard and Dr. Frankel have trained over 1,000 patient safety officers worldwide and regularly are called upon to provide patient safety and quality guidance, from the bedside to the boardroom. Dr. Leonard has advised senior clinical and executive leaders as well as led clinical intervention and training in hospitals and healthcare systems in North America, Europe, the Middle East and Asia.

Dr. Leonard has been Physician Leader for Patient Safety at Kaiser Permanente and a senior faculty member at the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI). Most recently, he was named Adjunct Professor of Medicine at Duke University School of Medicine.

For the past several years, he has taught extensively throughout the Kaiser system and outside organizations in high-risk areas such as surgery, obstetrics, critical care and others to enhance safety. At the IHI, he has co-taught in the IHI Patient Safety College and has been active in several domains, including the Patient Safety Officer Training Course, Transforming Care at the Bedside, the Safer Patients Initiative in the United Kingdom, and Patient Safety Scotland.

In addition to teaching and lecturing widely, Dr. Leonard has written widely on patient safety, including Achieving Safe and Reliable Healthcare, in collaboration with Dr. Allan Frankel from Partners Healthcare and Terri Simmonds of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement. In 2009, The Joint Commission and IHI co-published The Essential Guide for Patient Safety Officers, which Dr. Leonard and Dr. Frankel co-edited and for which they contributed.

In 1999, he helped Kaiser forge a collaborative relationship with Dr. Robert Helmreich’s Human Factors Research Project to work on the application of human factors teamwork and communication training, introducing into healthcare as a physician many of the concepts of Crew Resource Management (CRM) pioneered by aviation.

An honors graduate of the University of Missouri School of Medicine, Dr. Leonard did his postgraduate training in Internal Medicine and Anesthesiology at Harvard’s Beth Israel Hospital in Boston, with fellowship training in cardiac anesthesia. He was a practicing anesthesiologist for 14 years with the Colorado Permanente Medical Group, where he was Chief of Anesthesia, Chief of Surgical Services, and Chairman of the Board of Directors.