Principal Quality Improvement Consultant

Job Summary:

The Quality Improvement Consultant, at all levels, examines complex organizational issues in order to identify, develop, and execute on projects that will impact the strategic priorities for quality improvement. This individual is primarily responsible for:

1) Partnering with operational leaders and their teams to drive breakthrough clinical improvement aligned with strategic priorities by developing process/performance improvement (PPI) plans by scoping projects and establishing charters, directing/managing implementation teams, and bringing projects to completion

2) Driving a continuous improvement mindset and educating leaders and teams on various improvement methodologies

This role oversees and executes cross-departmental, cross-functional, complex projects requiring strong collaboration with dyad clinical and operational leaders, central business operations, and other stakeholders. The ideal candidate will be sophisticated in project management and performance improvement methodologies (six sigma, lean, IHI, etc.), and will provide coaching to less experienced consultants. This role will also calculate return on investments in quality projects and support tracking and reduction of costs for patients and the organization.

Job Expectations:

•  Lead investigations of complex quality and safety issues in order to prevent recurrence, maximizing learning, reduce costs, and improve patient outcomes.
•  Facilitate multifaceted quality, safety and performance improvement projects, working with local teams to develop robust and sustainable improvements, implement changes, and monitor outcomes.
•  Use industry tools and methods to identify and initiate analysis of systems to prevent future errors; collaborate with facility leaders and system experts to implement corrective actions
•  Apply principles of reliable design to ensure delivery of evidence-based care and reduction in preventable harm
•  Investigate/explore complex patient safety, quality, and organizational issues in order to identify and develop strategic priorities for improvement.
• Identify and Initiate evaluation and redesign of systems to improve quality measures; identifying necessary resources to fully implement quality and performance improvement; partnering with leaders to act on any resource barriers; focusing on reliability and applying the principles of reliable design to improve the consistent delivery of quality clinical care
•  Assists leaders and teams in establishing performance standards and metrics as well as identifying goals while ensuring that partnerships exist with other areas of the business to develop, implement, or refine workflows or data collection and management methods to ensure accurate measurement and tracking of process and improvement results
•  Strong working knowledge of regulatory requirements affecting the development of implementation strategies (e.g., CMS, JCAHO, HIPPA, etc.).
•  Provide coaching to less experienced consultants as well as be involved with department training efforts as assigned.
•  Anticipate and identify barriers to change and develop countermeasures in conjunction with leadership to overcome barriers
•  Promote and utilize health equity principles when reviewing data and developing improvement opportunities using a holistic approach

Required:

• Bachelor's degree
• 10 years experience in Quality/Performance Improvement
• One Lean Certification Silver, Gold level 
• Six Sigma Black Belt

Preferred:

• Master's degree
• Six Sigma Master Black Belt
• Certified Professional in Healthcare Quality (CPHQ)

Additional Skills and Experience:

• Demonstrated relational qualities (active listening, clear/concise communication, humble inquiry, effective relationship building, understanding of customer requirements/meeting them where they are at)
•  Experience with development and/or deployment of a comprehensive quality and safety program infrastructure.
•  Experience leading and partnering with operational leaders on improvement work, preferably in a healthcare setting
•  Experience facilitating multi-disciplinary groups through successful improvement initiatives and change
•  Advanced in analytical skills including collection, analysis and interpretation of qualitative and quantitative data and the creation of sustainable measurement systems
•  Advanced skills in MS Office suite (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Visio, Project, SharePoint, OneNote), statistical analysis software (Minitab), data presentation software (R, PowerBI, Tableau) and data source platforms (EPIC, Strata, etc.)