Houston Methodist

Key Responsibilities

• • Identifies opportunities and takes action to build strategic relationships between one’s area and other areas, teams, departments, and units to achieve business goals.
• • Drives the promotion of teamwork within and between departments; participates and/or leads and facilitates department process improvements as needed.
• • Promotes a collaborative environment with directors, physicians and staff.
• • Participates in orienting Medical Staff and other hospital staff members to policies and procedures.
• • Supports and enforces behavior standards and procedures for medical staff as it relates to factors that contribute to adverse events and quality of care improvement.
• • Provides leadership and communication to maintain a competent and engaged division by conducting regular department meetings to review operational matters, setting goals, and discussing system initiatives that impact department.
• • Addresses patient care issues that arise.
• • Provides physician leadership to staff in preparation and review of cases for peer review as needed.
• • Guides the peer review, credentialing and reappointment process.
• • Serves as liaison with medical staff to assure appropriate utilization of hospital services/resources.
• • Participates in preparation and presentation of issues to the Board of Trustees.
• • Provides communication and education to the Medical Staff, Hospital Leadership, Staff and Board of Trustees.
• • Active participation in the recruitment of medical staff to meet long term objectives.
• • Enhances physician recruitment and retention programs through the development of strategies to support physician practices.
• • Attends meetings of the Medical Staff and service line meetings as appropriate, providing communication and education to the Medical Staff, Hospital Leadership, Staff and Board of Trustees.
• • Partners with HM Information Technology (IT) staff, researchers, and medical staff members to develop IT strategies that will support patient care and quality.
• • Collaborates in the development of physician order entry, bar coding, and other devices in the delivery of clinical care.
• • Meets with Directors, CNO and CEO on a regular basis to review appropriate data relating to operations, quality of care, and patient safety, and quality of customer service.
• • Drives department service standards and activities to impact overall score for patient satisfaction, through role modeling and fostering accountability.
• • Oversees, provides medical direction and directs the development of a comprehensive quality and patient safety program with practice guidelines, policies and procedures.
• • Role models situational awareness, using teachable moments to improve safety and service, collaborating with physicians and Hospital Leadership.
• • Utilizes change management principles to promote continuous quality improvement.
• • Employs a proactive approach in the optimization of safe outcomes, using peer-to-peer accountability and identifying solutions to challenges via collaboration.
• • Provides psychological safety within the organization with an expectation for “stopping the line” if an unsafe condition is identified.
• • Communicates with management regarding services and clinical enhancements necessary to maintain or achieve a safe, high quality patient care environment, actively mitigating risk.
• • Provides appropriate medical direction in accordance with all applicable hospital policies and procedures.
• • Participates in accreditation and other surveys as appropriate.
• • Leads initiatives related to medical staff clinical effectiveness, which include care path development, disease management, utilization and resource management, performance improvement, outcomes studies and best practices/benchmarking, assuring compliance with hospital and other regulatory safety requirements.
• • Oversees investigation and internal reporting of sentinel events and serves as physician champion in PI efforts related to Patient Safety.
• • Serves as the primary investigator for Medical Staff interviews for sentinel events and other medical care questions.
• • Serves as a liaison with medical staff, both full-time and voluntary faculty, collectively and individually, to assure appropriate utilization of hospital services/resources.
• • Develops long-range goals, annual objectives, and strategies for the Hospital.
• • Establishes appropriate budget; plan and organize areas of responsibility to accomplish operational and strategic objectives and do so within budget.
• • Tracks the effectiveness of initiatives through analysis of clinical information/data and interprets and presents the results to members of the medical staff.
• • Work with Chief Physician Executive, system Executives and other colleagues to develop innovative educational programs that incorporate evolving requirements and paradigms for assigned area(s).
• • Proactively evaluates processes; recommends and implements action plan(s) for change.
• • Participates in the development and implementation of new procedures and the review and revision of existing procedures.
• • Participates in speaking engagements, presentations or educational rounds to further enhance departmental and system-wide Houston Methodist.
• • Serves as a physician champion and change agent for assigned projects.