The Planning & Program Director serves as the senior leader of the Rural Health Transformation Program (RHTP) planning and performance effort, and region-wide care delivery system transformation. Reporting directly to the Chief Strategy Officer, and in close coordination with the Chief Business Intelligence Officer on analytics strategy, this role is responsible for providing strategic leadership and oversight across all planning, implementation, and performance measurement deliverables in the 10-county region, ensuring alignment with New York State Department of Health requirements and regional priorities.

The Planning & Program Director provides direct supervision to a team of Planning Managers, Analysts, and Project Managers, ensuring integrated execution of planning, transformation, and analytics deliverables. This role ensures that all planning activities are grounded in community voice, organizational strategic priorities, quantitative evidence, and stakeholder alignment, while equipping governance bodies and sub-region partners with the data tools, reporting frameworks, and analytical guidance needed to measure and communicate impact, connecting the rigor of performance data with the relationship management needed to turn insights into action on the ground.

Essential Functions:

Strategic Leadership

• In collaboration with the Chief Strategy Officer, establish the strategic vision for rural health transformation in the Southern Tier, ensuring the greatest impact can be achieved, and measurable change occurs at regular intervals.
• Develop and build strategic partnerships with the governance team, health systems, public health departments, and other essential stakeholders to create buy-in and drive transformative change.
• Set strategic direction and provide oversight for: needs assessments, community engagement, workforce strategy, rural health and social care integration and transformation, financial sustainability planning, and development of implementation-ready plans for RHTP and transformation initiatives.
• Synthesize all deliverables approved by the NYS DOH into a cohesive implementation strategy, ensure resource allocation aligns with capacity, and secure governance endorsement of the multi-year plan.

Program Management Office & Team Leadership

• Establish a Program Management Office (PMO) function for RHTP planning and performance work: standardize project management methodologies, tools, and reporting cadences; maintain integrated work plans, timelines, budgets, and risk/issue logs across sub-regions; ensure consistent, on-time, delivery of all deliverables and disciplined tracking of spend against budget.
• Provide oversight and supervision for the Planning Team and the Performance Analytics team, fostering a culture of subject matter expertise, project management discipline, analytical rigor, and actionable insight, including future-facing strategic planning for regional collaboration.

Performance Analytics

• In coordination with the Chief Business Intelligence Officer, provide strategic direction for the design and evolution of performance tracking frameworks, KPIs, and baseline reporting across all sub-regions, and guide the Analysts' development of dashboards and reporting tools, ensuring output goes beyond data display to provide narrative context, programmatic interpretation, and actionable implications for governance bodies and planning and implementation teams.
• Ensure the Performance Analytics team serves as a resource to sub-region partners, supporting data needs and analytical capacity for partner-executed projects.
• Oversee the deployment and follow-up of provider assessments, the identification of technical assistance needs, and tracking of completion rates across organizations and sub-regions.
• Direct the design and administration of surveys and data collection tools that support community engagement activities.
• Oversee coordination of data access, data sharing agreements, workflow mapping, and referral pathway design with public health, hospital, clinical, operational, IT, and social care partners.
• Oversee proactive monitoring of performance data across sub-regions to identify variation from expected trajectories, direct root cause analysis to diagnose drivers of underperformance, recommend targeted interventions to planning and partner teams, and ensure improvement impact is validated through pre- and post-intervention tracking, supporting grant compliance reporting with evidence-based documentation.

Reporting & Stakeholder Engagement

• Support workforce, financial, and implementation planning by overseeing local data collection and the tracking of deliverable completion, reporting timelines, and data quality across sub-regions.
• Present performance findings, data insights, and planning/PMO progress at governance meetings, planning convenings, and partner forums.
• Collaborate and communicate effectively with Care Compass internal departments and external advisors to prevent silos and maximize utilization of talent and resources across the Care Compass enterprise.

Non-Essential Functions:

May assume additional responsibilities as requested.

MINIMUM REQUIREMENTS:

• A bachelor's degree is required. Masters preferred.
• Minimum of 7 to 10 years of progressive leadership experience in health care, public health and/or rural health program management, including large-scale, multi-stakeholder initiatives in a regional or statewide context.
• Experience structuring and supporting subcontract/subgrant relationships with partner organizations, including scoping deliverables for execution by outside entities.
• Proven ability to develop cross-functional teams and engage government agencies, governance bodies, and executive-level stakeholders (e.g., DOH, health system and community leaders).
• Experience coordinating data collection activities and working with diverse data sources, including public health, hospital, and social care data and experience translating complex data findings for non-technical audiences and building analytical capacity within partner or community-based organizations.
• Strong strategic, analytical, and project management skills; prioritization, and decision-making skills, and experience establishing or operating within a PMO structure (work plans, budgets, timelines, risk/issue tracking).
• Excellent written, verbal and presentation communication skills.
• Proficiency in Microsoft Office Suite (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Teams) and familiarity with project management and data governance tools (e.g., MS Project, Smartsheet, etc.) and data visualization tools preferred. PMP or similar project management certification a plus.
• Ability to travel within the region for partner, governance and DOH meetings.

LICENSE/CERTIFICATION:

• Minimum Required: None required.

WORK ENVIRONMENT:

Care Compass utilizes a hybrid work model where employees can work remotely from a home office, while also working regularly in person as required for the role. This role will require regular travel across the 10 counties and in person work within the sub-regions as necessary. Estimated in-person workdays: 2-3 per week.