Steven Kalkanis, M.D.

Executive Vice President and CEO of Henry Ford Hospital and CEO of Henry Ford Medical Group

Dr. Steven Kalkanis is the Executive Vice President of Henry Ford Health, CEO of Henry Ford Hospital and CEO of the Henry Ford Medical Group.

In January 2020, after an extensive national search, Dr. Kalkanis was named the Chief Executive Officer of the Henry Ford Medical Group, with over 2,000 physicians and researchers, and Chief Academic Officer and Senior Vice President of Henry Ford Health, with over 1,100 ACGME-approved residents and fellows across five acute care hospitals, based in southeast Michigan. He also serves as the dyad leader for Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit as well as the broader clinical delivery system for Henry Ford Health. Before taking over as CEO, Dr. Kalkanis served as professor and chair of the Department of Neurosurgery, and co-director of the Neuroscience Institute at Henry Ford in Detroit, Michigan, where he also served as the founding Medical Director of the Henry Ford Cancer service line, one of the largest in the country, and oversaw the building of the new Brigitte Harris Cancer Pavilion at Henry Ford. Dr. Kalkanis and his team also spearheaded one of the country’s most comprehensive precision medicine and molecular tumor board programs for all cancer types.

In 2021, Dr. Kalkanis was also named the inaugural President of the newly formed Henry Ford Health-Michigan State University Health Sciences enterprise, while serving as the first regional dean of the Henry Ford campus of the MSU College of Human Medicine.

In 2023 Dr. Kalkanis was named CEO of Henry Ford Hospital. It’s the first time in Henry Ford Health’s history that its primary academic and complex care hub and medical group are under singular physician leadership. His expanded role came on the heels of the system and key partners having announced a $2.5 billion investment to reimagine Henry Ford’s academic healthcare campus, including a new hospital facility and patient tower, and its surrounding neighborhood in Detroit.

Dr. Kalkanis joined Henry Ford in 2004 after completing his neurosurgical training at Massachusetts General Hospital. He graduated with highest honors from Harvard University, where he was awarded the John Harvard Scholarship, and then Harvard Medical School, where he served as class marshal and received the Linnane Prize for highest academic achievement.

In 2009, Dr. Kalkanis led a multidisciplinary team of experts to publish the largest set of guidelines to date on the treatment pathways for metastatic brain tumors. Since then, he has chaired the guidelines efforts of the Joint Section on Tumors and was the founding chair of the Congress of Neurological Surgeons (CNS) Guidelines Committee, where he helped to spearhead ten separate clinical guidelines in multiple topics.

Dr. Kalkanis has served on the Executive Committee of the CNS, the largest neurosurgical association in the world, since 2009, and recently completed his term in 2021 as President of the CNS, one of the most visible neurosurgical leadership roles in the country. He also serves as Past-Chair for the Section on Tumors of the CNS and American Association of Neurological Surgeons, and he is a past president of the Michigan Association of Neurological Surgeons. In 2018, Dr. Kalkanis was chosen to receive one of the profession’s highest honors in being named Director of the American Board of Neurological Surgery, the accrediting and credentialing body for all neurosurgeons in the United States.

With the goal of refining future personalized medicine treatment protocols, and as the Mark Rosenblum Endowed Chair in Neurosurgery, Dr. Kalkanis runs a funded translational research laboratory investigating the molecular genetic differences between short-and long-term glioma survivors. Specializing in brain tumor surgery, he has been involved in numerous clinical trials for brain tumors and has authored over 200 peer reviewed publications and has been invited on over 60 occasions as a visiting professor around the world.

Steve and his wife Laurel especially enjoy traveling with, and cheering on, their three children, Nicholas, Connor and Grace, in multiple athletic and musical activities.