Director Consumer/Patient Access - Hackensack Meridian Health

Our team members are the heart of what makes us better.

At Hackensack Meridian Health we help our patients live better, healthier lives — and we help one another to succeed. With a culture rooted in connection and collaboration, our employees are team members. Here, competitive benefits are just the beginning. It’s also about how we support one another and how we show up for our community.

Together, we keep getting better - advancing our mission to transform healthcare and serve as a leader of positive change.

The Director, Consumer & Patient Access provides the leadership, vision, and oversight of a centralized consumer access strategy and the enterprise performance to achieve market-leading access and consumer experience for HMH patients and consumers. The incumbent will serve as a subject matter expert for patient access related to hospital and physician environments and will be responsible to set and align executive leadership on the direction for the health system's consumer access strategy, its performance and offerings, lead change management to achieve key enterprise access strategy milestones, monitor access performance to facilitate progress and improvement and to provide leadership and management for centralized enterprise access functions.

This position will offer a hybrid schedule.  The expectation is to be in our Edison, NJ  office and /or other HMH locations at least 2-3 days per week.

A day in the life of a Director, Consumer & Patient Access at Hackensack Meridian Health includes:

• Provides leadership and direction on strategies that deliver on the strategic imperative of excellent patient access and exceptional patient experience, including communication and collaboration with senior leaders and staff across the health system.
• Responsible for establishing leading access standards and partnering with key stakeholders to ensure implementation and adherence to those standards.
• Lead change management efforts to promote effective adoptions of access solutions that pushes the health system to think in new ways about consumer and patient value.
• Provides enterprise-level responsibility for the Patient Access Center which includes scheduling, contact center operations and referral management.
• Lead a multidisciplinary team of Patient Access Center managers and staff to ensure efficient and effective execution of operational activities and development of short and long-term strategic planning.
• Establishes, maintains, and manages relationships with clinical, administrative and physician leaders throughout the hospitals, health/wellness centers and physician practices.
• Maintain an in-depth knowledge of the patient access industry and an understanding of leading practices and technologies being deployed by other large national and regional health systems.
• Establish policies and procedures to ensure a seamless, exceptional patient experience across the organization and across a broad range of customer touch points, processes, applications, and channels, including telephone, email, web, chat, text, and fax.
• In conjunction with the VP, maintains the department budget including coordination of expenses and resource allocation across the Patient Access Center. Develops and manages annual operating budgets for all areas of direct responsibility. Assists in identifying opportunities for expense savings and/or revenue enhancement. Analyzes budget variances while implementing improvement initiatives as needed.
• Partner with clinical and administrative client leadership to proactively enhance patient experience and identify and resolve operational performance issues relating to Patient Access Center operations.
• Collaborate with DTS in the design, adoption, and optimization of access-related tools and technology, such as: Epic optimization, provider template design, template management, referring provider portals, provider on-call systems, call center systems, and capacity management tools.
• Other duties and/or projects as assigned.
• Adheres to HMH Organizational competencies and standards of behavior.

Education, Knowledge, Skills and Abilities Required:

• Bachelor's degree.
• Minimum of 7 years of healthcare contact center (or care coordination) leadership experience.
• Demonstrated success in leading teams and ability to create, organize and execute programs that depend upon participation and engagement of physicians and staff for successful completion.
• Strong ability to develop relationships and influence across a broad set of stakeholders without having direct authority of all aspects of decision- making.
• Comprehensive understanding of Epic, to include Prelude, Cadence, Grand Central, Hospital and Professional billing.
• Experience in a complex and matrix environment such as an academic medical center or large integrated health system, with a strong physician component.
• Maintains and demonstrates expert knowledge of the application of the Enterprise Access process and leading practices.
• Trustworthy executive with a reputation for fairness, professionalism, dependability and adherence to high ethical standards
• Significant operational expertise to effectively drive core problem solving, root cause analysis, and prioritization
• Outstanding problem solving, organizational, communication, time management and analytical skills; must be able to organize, coach and lead a team deploying change under aggressive timelines and within budget
• Exceptional patient focus and strong professional acumen with an ability to demonstrate genuine concern for patients and patient experience
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills.
• Proficient computer skills that include but are not limited to Microsoft Office and/or Google Suite platforms.

Education, Knowledge, Skills and Abilities Preferred:

• Master's Degree in Health Care or Business Management or other related field preferred
• Minimum of 10 years of experience in healthcare or clinical environment preferred
• Experience with a healthcare organization
• Experience with PeopleSoft, Epic, Cisco, business intelligence tools

If you feel that the above description speaks directly to your strengths and capabilities, then please apply today!