Dr. Cauwels serves as chief medical officer for Sanford Health, the nation’s largest rural health system. There, he represents the interests of 4,500 physicians and advanced practice providers while chairing the system’s quality cabinet and overseeing enterprise medical staff functions and graduate medical education. He leads “Sanford Accountability for Excellence,” a systemwide quality and safety initiative focused on clinical quality, patient safety, employee engagement and physician wellbeing. Under his leadership, Sanford achieved a 72% reduction in serious safety events across the system and sustained improvement in patient experience scores over the past year. Dr. Cauwels has also been instrumental in expanding Sanford’s graduate medical education programs, which now train more than 400 residents and fellows annually, with approximately 40% remaining to practice within the system and strengthening the rural workforce pipeline. A national voice in rural healthcare delivery, he advocates for virtual care and innovative access models to bring high-quality services closer to patients across dispersed communities.
