Executive Director, Care Coordination

The Care Coordination Executive Director is accountable for leadership and management of the performance of the Care Coordination Division for the Department of Nursing Services and Patient Care within University of Iowa Health Care and Clinical Enterprise to develop and implement care coordination as a foundation of a new model of health care delivery that is patient-centered, accessible, and an interprofessional approach.  The Care Coordination Division includes Utilization Management (UM), Nurse Navigators, Post-Acute, Accountable Care Organization (ACO), and Social Services. The Care Coordination Executive Director will work directly with and report to the Chief Nurse Executive.  The Executive Director will work collaboratively with the Chief Medical Officer and operations team

This position is accountable to align Care Coordination operations across UI Health Care with institutional goals, ensuring regulatory compliance, supporting financial sustainability, and fostering a culture of safety, excellence, and continuous improvement.  The Care Coordination Executive Director will enhance the organization’s capacity to perform by addressing medical and psychosocial needs of patients and their families by providing timely care coordination at appropriate levels through an interprofessional approach and coordinating  patient care throughout the continuum in order to achieve the most cost effective, efficient, and high-quality outcomes.

 The Care Coordination Executive Director will also work collaboratively with senior leadership, faculty, and staff to develop and enact initiatives and operational improvement and coordinate/drive continuous process improvement throughout UI Health Care.  

• Be primarily responsible for financial oversight of Care Coordination , including MTD, YTD, Budget, Capital, and financial reporting across the enterprise.   

• Ensures the fiscal management of department activities ensuring that departments operate within allocated funds. Analyzes spending plans and monitors department compliance with budgetary policy. Explores and resolves budgetary variances. 

• Develop, oversee, and provide support for capital budget requests, contract development, and policy updates as related to the office of the CMO.   

• Assume responsibility for development, implementation, evaluation, and maintenance of cost accounting, rate setting, and patient support fund usage. 

• Utilize and analyze metrics to drive value to assure cost effective allocations of resources. 

• Critically analyze patient census, inpatient bed needs, and available resources to maintain safe patient care.  

• Lead/participate in reduction of length of stay and other initiatives to increase efficiency and effectiveness of health care delivery which reduce overall costs to the organization.  

• Benchmark with academic medical centers to determine best practices related to patient flow and throughput. 

• Optimize skill mix, scope of practice, and operational efficiency. 

• Participate in annual budget preparation, continuous monitoring of divisional budget, and justification of variances as needed.  

• Ongoing monitoring and maintenance of position control/position management control documents. 

• Manage all contract components related to the Division of Care Coordination (i.e – External Agencies, Transportation, etc). 
• Provide necessary data to UI Health Care leaders (VPMA, CNE, CEO, CMO) as requested.
• Oversee and operate all other executive projects assigned by UI Health Care Senior Leadership.  These projects will vary in focus based on the needs of the institution.  
• Participate in bed huddles to triage and assist with patient throughput, beds opening up, and anticipated bed needs for the day. 
• Lead initiatives to optimize patient care and quality outcomes. 
• Monitor outcome metrics = quality, safety, cost, and satisfaction across clinical units. 
• Analyze current operations to identify and evaluate program strengths and weaknesses in relation to operational effectiveness. Develop strategies and plans for new program development based on analysis of competitive trends, market share data, capital needs and human resource utilization. 
• Support nursing and interprofessional leadership to design efficient/effective and safe systems and processes to ensure patient safety and optimize patient outcomes. 
• Develop and support staff to effectively triage patient discharges to home or to another agency or facility.  
• Ensure regulatory standards are met and understood by personnel, e.g. assessing patient flow issues throughout the hospital, the impact on patient safety and a plan to mitigate the impact. 
• Oversee the administration of the Physician Advisor Director program.  This includes continuous evaluation of the specific roles and outcomes.   
• Participate in meetings as directed by the CNE/CMO
• Oversee global improvement initiatives within the inpatient/ambulatory platform from conception through complete implementation.   
• Identify and address opportunities for improvement related to patient care including developing plans to assess and correct patient discharge barriers 
• Seek and evaluate best practices by benchmarking with like institutions to continuously improve patient care outcomes.   
• Enhance care coordination by the interprofessional team by working with the variety of interprofessional team members,   sharing data, developing and implementing new processes that are efficient, enhance throughput, and improve the patient experience.   
• Challenge past practices with patient throughput/placement across the continuum. 

·     Oversee strategically identified metrics for improvements, beginning with improvements in Length of Stay. 

·     Facilitate steering committee, agendas and follow up action items, to keep strategic initiatives moving forward. 

• Work with the senior leaders of UI Healthcare to partner in achieving the strategic goals.    
• Communicate a shared vision for optimal care for all patients. 
• Achievement of quality improvement in relation to assigned/delegated pillars of the Department of Nursing Services and Patient Care strategic plan. 
• Participate in the design of systems to measure and monitor outcomes of care. 
• Identify and communicate need for additional resources to address patient care issues. 
• Identify hospital operations’ strengths and weaknesses and act on opportunities for improvement for patient care/quality, staff engagement, and overall operational efficiency.   
•  Provide supervision of daily operations of the assigned staff providing service throughout the University of Iowa Health Care. 
• Develop and retain qualified nursing and social work staff. For direct reports, assure performance expectations are clearly understood. 
• Adhere to all University of Iowa Health Care guidelines and respective collective bargaining agreements. 
• Maintain a climate of learning that promotes professional growth of staff. 
• Create and maintain a culture of accountability and service excellence. Hold staff accountable to meet or exceed expectations as well as maintain standards of collaboration and respect within and among multi-disciplinary teams. 
• Build an effective divisional/cross divisional leadership team.   Prepare divisional leadership staff to lead/participate/serve as effective members of the multidisciplinary clinical team. 
• Demonstrate commitment to people; coach staff to participate in team decision-making. 
• Actively seek participation from staff in decision-making and customer service improvement activities.  
• Maintain a climate of learning that promotes collaborative research for students in the University of Iowa Health Science Colleges and other health programs. 
• Provide staff with tools to learn and apply skills related to change management/work redesign. 
• With physicians and other University of Iowa Health Care staff, provide systems to implement clinical guidelines for the effective management and movement of patients through the health care system. 
• Support staff education including, but not limited to, competency assurance and professional development/mentorship. 
• Partner with the College of Nursing and the School of Social Work faculty in creating a learning community for staff and faculty.