Ob/gyn Margaret McKenzie, MD, Appointed President of Cleveland Clinic South Pointe Hospital

Margaret McKenzie, MD, is the second Cleveland Clinic ob/gyn to take the helm of a Cleveland Clinic regional hospital.

She is the new President of Cleveland Clinic South Pointe Hospital in Warrensville Heights, Ohio. Rebecca Starck, MD, is the system’s other ob/gyn who serves as a hospital president. She leads Cleveland Clinic Avon Hospital.

Dr. McKenzie’s first priority as South Pointe’s new chief administrator is to grow volume at the hospital.

“I’m also focusing on keeping the professional staff engaged, and making South Pointe a place where people want to come to work,” Dr. McKenzie notes.

Dr. McKenzie joined Cleveland Clinic Ob/Gyn & Women’s Health Institute as a staff member in 1995, and was named Section Head of General Obstetrics and Gynecology in 2008. In addition to main campus, she has practiced at Euclid and Hillcrest hospitals, and Beachwood and Willoughby Hills family health centers.

Extensive clinical and administrative background

Dr. McKenzie has extensive clinical, educational, administrative and leadership experience. She is a member of the Cleveland Clinic Board of Governors, the Operations Advisory Team, the Women’s Professional Staff Association and Co-Chair of the Association of Professors in Gynecology and Obstetrics Faculty Development Seminar.

An Assistant Professor of Surgery at the Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine, Dr. McKenzie also is Chair of the Physician Advisor Committee. Within the Ob/Gyn & Women’s Health Institute, Dr. McKenzie served as Director of Medical Student Education and Discipline Leader/Clerkship Director. She also helped orchestrate the development of the Physician Diversity Scholars Program for Ohio University’s Heritage College of Osteopathic Medicine at South Pointe Hospital. She has relinquished other roles, but “will absolutely continue to see patients,” she says. “That’s my ‘northstar.’ It is why I became a physician.”

“Being a successful hospital president requires the ability to interact and communicate with colleagues and departments across the health system, helping us all function as a single unit,” Dr. McKenzie says. “I believe in the team approach and working across disciplines for the greater good of the whole. That is who I am.”

After earning her medical degree from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, she completed internship and residency training in obstetrics and gynecology at University Hospitals of Cleveland. Dr. McKenzie has co-authored two books and written several book chapters and articles in peer-reviewed journals. She is a sought-after speaker locally, nationally and internationally.

Dr. McKenzie succeeds Robert Juhasz, DO, who has returned to a full-time internal medicine clinical practice.

South Pointe Hospital is a 173-registered bed acute care, community teaching hospital that has served Northeast Ohio for 60 years. It originated as Brentwood Hospital and Suburban Community Hospital, which opened in 1957 as next-door neighbors separated by a creek. After many years, the two small hospitals merged to form South Pointe Hospital.

View this short biographical video with Dr. McKenzie.