Senior Vice President, Deputy Chief Medical Officer

The Deputy Chief Medical Officer (DCMO) is a senior executive responsible for supporting the Chief Medical Officer in the oversight, direction, and strategic planning of clinical operations, quality improvement and patient safety within Kaiser Permanente. The DCMO will help lead efforts to ensure high-quality, evidence-based, and cost-effective care is delivered consistently across all service lines, facilities, and care settings. The SVP DCMO role directs and manages efforts to ensure that Kaiser Permanente-s health care, quality and safety exceeds regulatory and accreditation standards and is reliably among the best in the nation. This includes performance on Medicare-s health plan stars program, NCQA health plan accreditation programs, and The Joint Commission surveys of Kaiser Foundation Hospitals. The leader in this position will demonstrate a robust understanding of all relevant regulatory and accreditation standards. This role requires a leader with expertise and experience in strategic healthcare redesign, workflow analysis, evaluation and performance improvement. The incumbent must demonstrate the ability to use strong process and data-driven analytical skills to identify opportunities for improvement, update knowledge, and adjust decision-making over time. The leader in this role will require a deep knowledge of health care operations and build partnerships with the chief operating officer, the chief nurse executive, executive leaders for ambulatory care and behavioral health, as well as medical quality and safety leaders including those in the Kaiser Permanente Medical Foundation and The Permanente Federation. The senior vice president, Health Plan and Hospitals will also provide guidance to the market level vice presidents for Quality and manage shared services between the national program office and markets.

• Kaiser Foundation Health Plan and Hospitals (KFHP/H) Quality Program:
• Ensure the KFHP/H Quality program is designed and implemented to ensure high quality, safe and effective health care in all settings. Provide strategic vision and guidance to evolve and improve the program.
• Provide strategic and operational support to the Executive Vice President, Chief Medical Officer (CMO) National Health Plan and Hospitals Quality, to manage the structural matrix and collaborative relationship with regional quality leaders in the Health Plan, KP Medical Foundation and Permanente organizations.
• Co-lead efforts with national care delivery teams to standardize practices and workflows, reduce variation, and enhance oversight in the areas of Health Plan and Hospitals Quality, ambulatory operations, and Patient Care Services in the regions. Lead with the lens of quality and safety to ensure high quality and safe outcomes for members and for providers.
• Partner with market regional presidents to establish shared services for key quality functions within their markets.
• Partner with national legal services team and market quality leaders to ensure compliance with all quality related regulations and to establish opportunities to leverage shared learnings with legal that support quality assurance and quality improvement efforts throughout all regions.
  Standardization of KFHP/H Quality Services and Oversight:
• Partner with national IT and regional presidents to establish and execute a process for having a consistent and fully aligned approach for adopting technology to support quality functions.
• Provide regular updates on the progress of work and change management to the regional presidents and KFH executive leaders.
• Drive innovation and transformation in care delivery models, population health management, and integrated care and coverage strategies.
  Safety Management System and Clinical Risk Management:
• Ensure the development and maintenance of a safety culture across Kaiser Permanente. Support the quality and operational market leaders in monitoring key quality and safety measures and the development of clinical and operational improvement plans for areas of performance opportunities.
• Ensure industry-leading safety, reliability, and risk management systems are developed, implemented, and sustained. This includes building, maintaining, and bringing technical expertise and system-level monitoring to focus and to apply the relevant expertise to issues.
• Maintain focus and alignment between the Health Plan and Hospitals Quality teams, the Permanente Federation, KP Medical Foundation and National Health Plan and Hospital Quality teams to leverage data to make decisions, and to keep the lines of decisions, actions, and strategy open with workplace safety leadership. Focus on key safety measures such as the Patient Safety Composite (hospital acquired infections (HAI), patient falls, hospital acquired pressure injuries (HAPI).
• Support the regional presidents to set and achieve safety performance goals.
  Clinical Services Quality Improvement:
• Provide executive level support and leadership for quality improvement
• Support the development of multi-year roadmaps for quality improvement in key clinical areas to meet the needs of our members and patients and the communities we serve.
• Support and evaluate the implementation of innovative, high-quality clinical care services in Cancer Care, Women and Children-s Health (WCH), surgical services and high-cost conditions.
• Oversee process for reviewing market requests for changes in clinical services.
  Governance, Accreditation, Regulatory, and Licensure:
• Provide strategic, management and operational support to the executive vice president, National Health Plan and Hospitals Quality, for quality oversight of the implementation of system wide quality governance, oversight, and quality assurance programs. Leadership and functional accountability include support for the following governance and oversight committees:
• Quality and Health Improvement Committee (QHIC)
• KP National Quality Committee (KPNQC) and associated subcommittees.
• National Leadership Team
• Executive co-chair, Medicare 5 Star leadership
• Regional Presidents peer group
• Serve as a key executive in support of the National Hospital Council and National Hospital Executives and in overseeing the governance activities on behalf of these bodies. This includes monitoring the program-wide quality performance, identification of gaps, making recommendations for improvement, and following up on action plans for improvement for critical issues.
• Maintain national strategic relationships with external agencies, including the National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA) and other strategic partners. Establish and maintain strong, on-going relationships with key regulatory bodies and accrediting organizations.
• Ensure oversight and ensure congruence with requirements defined by local, state, and federal accrediting and regulatory bodies including but not limited to Center for Medicare Service (CMS), state departments of health, The Joint Commission (TJC), Det Norske Veritas (DNV), Department of Managed Healthcare (DMHC), and National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA). Collaborate with other KP functions, including internal audit, legal and compliance, care delivery operations, environmental health, in areas necessitating quality and safety expertise, collaboration, and input.
  Medicare:
• Serve as co-executive chair for the Medicare Stars program, providing oversight for driving the execution of the Medicare Stars program to ensure the highest level of performance.
• Participate in the Medicare Stars Steering Committee to guide engagement with markets and measure owners to drive overall stars performance and report performance to KP National Quality Committee (KPNQC).
• Represent Health Plan and Hospitals Quality on the Medicare Formulary Committee.
  Behavioral Health Quality Assurance Oversight:
• Serve as a key executive in support of the Behavioral Health Oversight Committee and in overseeing the governance activities on behalf of the committee.
• Oversee the implementation and management of a national behavioral health quality assurance program, including the establishment of market level behavioral health oversight committees and monitoring of behavioral health access and quality performance measures across the markets.
• Ensure that regular qualitative medical record reviews for all markets are conducted to ensure compliance with regulatory standards and charting requirements.
• In partnership with the national care delivery operations leaders, responsible for the program to address performance opportunities with Behavioral Health access and documentation and ensure performance gaps are addressed with corrective action plans.
  Management Responsibility:
• Maintain accountability for staffing, staff development and engagement.
• Manage departmental finances and budget.