A solid financial performance across 2025 opens the door for continued growth and technology across the Cleveland Clinic, CEO and President Tom Mihaljevic, M.D., told employees in his annual “State of the Clinic” address.
The nonprofit, 23-hospital academic system outperformed its budget for 2025, bringing in $18 billion of operating revenue across the year with almost 16 million global patient encounters and an operating margin “exceeding 4%,” the physician executive announced.
That’s up from about $16 billion of revenue, 15 million patient encounters and a 1.7% operating margin the year prior. This week’s address also struck a different tone than the last go around, when Mihaljevic focused on “new financial challenges” and shared word of administrative job cuts.
“Good performance gives us resources to reinvest in the entirety of our mission,” he said in the video address. “It reflects the trust we have built with patients, the hard work of our caregivers and the stewardship of Cleveland Clinic. The groundwork for our progress was laid years ago when we reorganized under [a] new operating model. This platform allows us to function sustainably across all geographies with more uniform care."
In response to the growing pressures to deliver more care with less expense, the executive said he “expects” the future will see fewer standalone hospitals and more large, integrated systems like the Cleveland Clinic.
“Integrated systems offer predictability for patients, caregivers and communities,” he said. “They are better equipped to balance these priorities while being sustainable. Our resilience is an example.”
With a solid year on the books, Cleveland Clinic is pursuing growth across three major buckets, Mihaljevic said.
The first relates to strategic and enterprise growth across U.S. and international regions, markets and care specialties. Here, the executive’s message and accompanying release outlined a laundry list of ongoing and completed expansion efforts, including plans to secure a Level One Trauma Center designation for its main campus, a 2027 target for a London cancer center and the growth of Cleveland Clinic Abu Dhabi.
Mihaljevic also said the system will lead on digital transformation “by using artificial intelligence to connect and enhance every aspect of care.” He pointed to last year’s scale-up of an AI scribe that documented over 2 million patient encounters, and a strategic collaboration with Khosla Ventures to validate and bring new technologies into care.
“Picture a single platform that integrates staffing, scheduling, supply chain and patient care in real time,” he said. “It will remove daily frustrations so we can focus more on our patients. These are the kinds of solutions we are creating.”
Finally, Mihaljevic outlined the Cleveland Clinic’s heavy focus on research and innovation, noting that the organization has made its “largest research investment in our history, which doubled capacity.” These efforts span three continents, he said, and include funding and partnerships on computational advancements to solve biological and clinical problems as well as education on how to use these tools and others.
“We will never stop searching for opportunities to sustain our mission. Let us continue to innovate while being disciplined,” he said.
Mihaljevic’s presentation also touched on the Cleveland Clinic’s focus on workplace safety, a key topic in prior addresses. The system has invested in more security and safety training, and as a result, “reporting is up, escalation is being caught sooner and injuries are declining,” he said.