Organization:
Neurology Admin 20

Job Summary:
About the Tennessee Memory Care Assessment Network (MCAN)
Tennessee has an estimated 129,000 residents living with Alzheimer's disease and related dementias. Rural Tennesseans face three persistent barriers to timely diagnosis and care: a shortage of dementia specialists outside major urban centers, time constraints that limit how thoroughly primary care providers can evaluate cognitive concerns, and provider discomfort with disclosing a dementia diagnosis. The Tennessee Memory Care Assessment Network (MCAN) is a Vanderbilt Health-led hub-and-spoke model that establishes a standardized statewide dementia protocol connecting rural Tennesseans with suspected dementia to expert diagnosis, evidence-based treatment access, caregiver support, and provider education. Vanderbilt serves as the statewide Hub, supporting five regional spokes and a statewide Dementia Care Navigator workforce.

MCAN draws on Vanderbilt's existing infrastructure at scale: the Vanderbilt Health Affiliated Network (67 hospitals, more than 7,500 providers, and 1,789 adult PCPs across Tennessee); the NIA-designated Vanderbilt Alzheimer's Disease Research Center; the Division of Behavioral and Cognitive Neurology's subspecialty depth; Epic and REDCap informatics infrastructure extended to non-Epic sites via EpicCare Link; and a formal partnership with the Alzheimer's Association. An eleven-member External Advisory Board of clinical, community, and policy leaders provides independent accountability alongside Tennessee Department of Health oversight.

Position Summary
The Executive Program Director provides strategic and operational leadership for the Tennessee Memory Care Assessment Network, coordinating statewide partners, standardizing assessment and care pathways, and ensuring high-quality, data-driven program implementation and sustainability. This is the senior full-time leadership role on the MCAN team. This role will report to the Director and Co-Director, who will retain the clinical and scientific direction of the program.

The Executive Program Director translates the network's clinical, educational, and technical vision into a running statewide operation: standing up spoke sites, building and supervising the program management team and the statewide Dementia Care Navigator workforce, managing contractual milestones and Tennessee Department of Health reporting, and coordinating the clinical, IT, financial, and community stakeholders that make the hub-and-spoke model work. The role reports to and partners closely with the Directors, Ryan Darby, MD (Principal Investigator/Medical Director) and Co-Director, Ciaran Considine, PhD, ABPP-CN, while owning day-to-day program management, operations, compliance, and stakeholder relations across the network's five-year term.

Key Responsibilities

Program Leadership & Network Operations

• Serve as the day-to-day operational leader of MCAN, overseeing execution of all five program aims: standardized diagnostic protocol, phenotype-specific specialist diagnosis, navigator-facilitated care connection, interoperable IT infrastructure, and workforce training.

• Working closely with the education / training team lead and the social work lead, standardize assessment and care pathways across the network, ensuring the diagnostic protocol is applied consistently from community awareness and PCP screening through navigator-assisted intake, specialist evaluation, disclosure and care planning, and structured follow-up.

• Manage the phased statewide rollout: select and onboard regional spoke sites in coordination with the Vanderbilt Health Affiliated Network (VHAN), and drive the network toward its contractual milestones - a live IT platform by Month 12, three operational spoke sites by Month 24, all five sites and a finalized statewide protocol by Month 36, and full network operation through Month 60.

• Coordinate statewide partners (spoke health systems, VHAN, the Alzheimer's Association, and community organizations) to keep the network's many stakeholders aligned around shared timelines and deliverables.

• Oversee program implementation quality: build the data-driven monitoring practices needed to track fidelity to the protocol and course-correct as the network scales.

• Lead sustainability planning so the network can continue generating clinical revenue, a trained workforce, and durable community partnerships beyond the state grant period.

Team Leadership

• Interview, hire, and directly supervise the MCAN program administrative management team: Program Manager, Hub-Spoke Clinic Coordinator, Communications Program Manager, Education / Outreach Program Manager. Provide operational oversight of the statewide Patient Service Specialist team, who support patients and caregivers with scheduling, navigation, and resource linkage, and of the broader Dementia Care Navigator workforce as it is built out across spoke sites.

• Set annual goals, manage performance, and support professional development for direct reports, building a program management team capable of operating at statewide scale.

Cross-Functional Coordination

• Serve as the central point of coordination between the program management team and the MCAN clinical and technical leadership, including the Co-Directors/Medical Director, Education and Community Outreach Lead, Rural Health and Dementia Equity Lead, Health IT Infrastructure Lead, Data, Reporting, and Biostatistics Core Team Lead, Anti-Amyloid Infusion Director, Lead Neuropsychologist, Social Work Lead, Geriatric Psychiatry lead, Geriatric Medicine Lead, Nurse Lead. .Partner with the Health IT Project Manager and Data/Biostatistics Core Lead to ensure the interoperable data system and reporting infrastructure are delivered on schedule and support quarterly program metrics.

• Work with the Education/Training Team Lead to align navigator training, PCP engagement, and Tennessee Dementia ECHO Program curriculum with network operational needs.

• Coordinate with VHAN leadership on spoke-site selection, provider engagement, and use of VHAN's population-health reporting and quality-measurement infrastructure.

Contract, Compliance & Reporting

• Own the MCAN relationship with the Tennessee Department of Health, ensuring the network meets contractual deliverables, quarterly reporting requirements, and grant-funded milestones.

• Work with Vanderbilt's Office of Sponsored Programs (OSP) on subcontracting, invoicing, subrecipient monitoring, and audit readiness for the life of the award.

• Prepare and present regular progress updates to the MCAN Co-Directors and the External Advisory Board, which meets quarterly.

• Monitor program budget execution against the approved grant budget and narrative, flagging risks and driving corrective action.

External & Community Relations

• Engage with the External Advisory Board, to cultivate and maintain the network's partnerships with the Alzheimer's Association, area agencies on aging, local health departments, patient advocacy organizations, and other community stakeholders.

• Represent MCAN to external partners, state officials, and the provider community, and support engagement with the External Advisory Board's clinical, community, and policy members.

• Support the recruitment of new provider spoke sites and rural PCP participation, working from VHAN's existing footprint of contractual relationships.

Sustainability & Growth

• Develop and execute strategies to generate the clinical revenue, trained workforce, and durable community partnerships needed to sustain MCAN beyond the state grant period.

• Identify opportunities to expand network capacity, including spoke-site infusion delivery capability and additional funding or partnership sources.

Qualifications

Required

• Bachelor's degree

• 5+ years of progressively responsible experience in healthcare program management, clinical research, clinical operations, or population health, ideally including multi-site or statewide network operations.

• Demonstrated experience managing complex, multi-stakeholder programs involving clinical, IT, financial, and community partners.

• Experience with grant- or state-contract-funded programs, including milestone tracking, budget oversight, and regulatory/reporting compliance.

• Strong understanding of, or ability to quickly learn, dementia care pathways, rural healthcare delivery challenges, and hub-and-spoke care models.

• Direct people-management experience, with a track record of building and leading a multi-function team (e.g., program/project managers, community outreach, communications, clinical operations); this role is budgeted to directly supervise five to six program managers plus coordination oversight of a larger statewide navigator/patient-service workforce.

• Excellent written and verbal communication skills, including experience presenting to boards, funders, or senior health-system leadership.

• Familiarity with EHR-based care coordination workflows (Epic preferred) and clinical research data platforms (REDCap preferred).

Preferred

• Experience within an academic medical center or large physician-led clinically integrated network (e.g., a health system affiliated network similar to VHAN).

• Master's degree in health administration, public health, business administration, nursing, or a related field (or equivalent experience), or advanced clinical or doctoral degree

• Prior experience with dementia, neurology, geriatrics, or memory-care programs.

• Experience building or scaling a statewide or regional care-navigation workforce.

• Familiarity with Tennessee's rural health landscape and community aging-services infrastructure.

About Vanderbilt Health

This role sits within the Department of Neurology at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, home to 8 subspecialty behavioral neurologists, 8-9 neuropsychologists, and 4 advanced-practice providers. The Executive Program Director will work alongside the MCAN leadership team - including the Co-Directors/Medical Director, Education and Community Outreach Lead, Rural Health and Dementia Equity Lead, Health IT Infrastructure Lead, and Data/Biostatistics Lead - and will have the backing of the Vanderbilt Health Affiliated Network, one of the largest physician-led clinically integrated networks in the nation.

Our professional administrative functions include critical supporting roles in information technology and informatics, finance, administration, legal and community affairs, human resources, communications and marketing, development, facilities, and many more.

At our growing health system, we support each other and encourage excellence among all who are part of our workforce. High-achieving employees stay at Vanderbilt Health for professional growth, appreciation of benefits, and a sense of community and purpose.