Director of Throughput, Patient Flow & Care Progression

UNC Rex Hospital | Raleigh, NC

Lead Operational Excellence. Transform the Patient Experience.

This leader will influence hospital-wide performance by reducing avoidable delays, improving care transitions, optimizing capacity, and strengthening collaboration across emergency services, inpatient units, physicians, nursing, case management, and operational teams.

Leadership Opportunity

As the Director of Throughput, Patient Flow & Care Progression, you will:

• Lead hospital-wide strategies to improve patient flow, reduce avoidable length of stay, and optimize capacity.
• Provide daily leadership and accountability for throughput, care progression, and operational improvement initiatives.
• Analyze observed versus expected length of stay and identify opportunities across service lines, diagnoses, providers, and clinical areas.
• Partner with physician, nursing, case management, and operational leaders to remove barriers to discharge and improve care transitions.
• Facilitate daily and weekly throughput reviews to drive accountability and accelerate improvement.
• Develop strategies to reduce Emergency Department boarding and improve bed utilization.
• Identify and address delays related to consults, testing, procedures, placement, and transitions of care.
• Build strong interdisciplinary partnerships that promote shared accountability for patient progression.
• Develop and monitor performance dashboards and utilize data to identify trends and improvement opportunities.
• Lead performance improvement initiatives utilizing Lean, PDSA, and change management methodologies.
• Report progress and outcomes to executive leadership and key operational committees.

Summary:
Leads hospital-wide initiatives to optimize patient flow, reduce avoidable length of stay, improve throughput, increase capacity, and enhance the patient and provider experience through data-driven operational improvement and multidisciplinary collaboration. Provides DAILY leadership and accountability for hospital-wide patient flow, capacity management, care progression, and throughput initiatives. Responsible for reducing avoidable length of stay, improving patient movement through the continuum of care, optimizing bed utilization, and enhancing access, quality, and patient experience.

Responsibilities:
1. Directs the development and administration of the budgets in the service area. Provides direction for the delivery of cost effective, quality patient care based on established regulatory, professional and organizational standards within the context of the operating vision using evidenced based management.
2. Establishes and/or provides leadership for the attainment of LOS goals in support of the organizational mission. Directs the implementation of processes to measure, assess and improve LOS reduction and work with dyad to achieve LOSI target. Develop and monitor throughput dashboards and metrics and analyze trends for opportunities for improvement
3. Coordinates and integrates services throughout the organization focused on reducing ED boarding, improved bed utilization, and elimination of barriers to discharge and care progression. Ensures qualified competent staffing, space, equipment and other resources are available to meet the scope of services available. Partner with bed placement and care teams to improve throughput and patient placement.
4. Adheres to the American Nurses Association Code of Ethics. Participates in performance improvement and quality improvement activities. Recognizes, supports, and utilizes evidence based nursing practices and evidenced based management practices. Represents Rex Healthcare with active participation in professional and community organizations. Participates/supports nursing shared governance activities.

Other Information

Other information:
Education Requirements:
• Master's degree in nursing or equivalent.
Licensure/Certification Requirements:
• Must have NC RN license. Nursing specialty certification by exam or portfolio.
Professional Experience Requirements:
• Requires four (4) years of related experience and/or training.
Knowledge/Skills/and Abilities Requirements:
• Language Skills: Ability to read, analyze, and interpret common scientific and technical journals, financial reports, and legal documents. Ability to respond to common inquiries or complaints from customers, regulatory agencies, or members of the business community. Ability to write speeches and articles for publication that conforms to prescribed style and format. Ability to effectively present information to top management, public groups, and/or boards of directors.
• Mathematical Skills: Ability to work with mathematical concepts such as probability and statistical inference, and fundamentals of plane. Ability to apply concepts such as fractions, percentages, ratios, and proportions to practical situations.
• Reasoning Ability: Ability to define problems, collect data, establish facts, and draw valid conclusions. Ability to interpret an extensive variety of technical instructions in mathematical or diagram form and deal with several abstract and concrete variables.

Job Details

Legal Employer: NCHEALTH

Entity: UNC REX Healthcare

Organization Unit: Rex VP Patient Care Svcs

Work Type: Full Time

Standard Hours Per Week: 40.00

Salary Range: $59.51 - $85.54 per hour (Hiring Range)

Pay offers are determined by experience and internal equity

Work Assignment Type: Onsite

Work Schedule: Day Job

Location of Job: US:NC:Raleigh

Exempt From Overtime: Exempt: Yes

This position is employed by NC Health (Rex Healthcare, Inc., d/b/a NC Health), a private, fully-owned subsidiary of UNC Heath Care System. This is not a State employed position.