Julie Cerese, Ph.D., RN

Julie Cerese leads the Member Networks and Performance Management Programs including the Patient Safety Organization, Nurse Residency Program and Accreditation consulting service at Vizient. In this role she provides leadership for the members’ experience in driving cost, quality and market performance through these subscription and programmatic offerings.

Prior to this, Julie led the University HealthSystem Consortium’s extensive performance improvement products and services. She oversaw its Intelligence™ suite of performance improvement platforms, comprehensive databases, informatics, analytics, quality research and nursing leadership activities. Julie also provided direction during the creation of the Quality and Accountability Study, which is the basis for the nationally recognized Bernard A. Birnbaum, MD, Quality Leadership Award, presented by Vizient to the top-performing academic medical centers each year and now to three other client cohorts.

Julie’s substantial knowledge of clinical quality improvement is supplemented by her previous role as director of quality and infection control at Chicago’s Northwestern Memorial Hospital where she leveraged her clinical quality improvement experience. Prior to that, she served as senior director of University HealthSystem Consortium’s clinical process improvement area.

Julie holds a doctorate in interprofessional education along with a master’s degree and bachelor’s degree in nursing from the Loyola University Chicago Niehoff School of Nursing. In addition, she is the author of many journal articles on quality, performance improvement and clinical topics.