Epic Clinical Applications Director a" Behavioral Health

Application Description

The Director of Behavioral Health Applications will provide leadership and direction of the analyst team responsible for the design, implementation, and support of the Epic Acute and Ambulatory Behavioral modules.   The Director is responsible to devise strategies and plans in conjunction with their operational counterparts to ensure the Service Line goals and visions are met by providing effective tools, software configurations, and ensuring that workflows are efficiently supported by the applications.   This includes supporting of regulatory and financial components.

• Behavioral Health Application  - includes ambulatory, partial hospital Outpatient hospital, grant, group home and acute care setting.   Application supports the workflow and patient movement/care throughout the Behavioral Health continuum.  Includes therapist, physician and nursing application tools for treatment plans, group meetings, documentation and follow up.

Role Description

The Director of Behavioral Health Applications is primarily responsible for directing and managing team roles such as Application Manager, Application Lead, and resources inclusive of Application Analysts, consultants and Epic boost resources.  The Director is responsible for all core activities pertaining to the staffing, budgeting, planning, execution, and support of applications related to the Behavioral Health Applications.  The Director is responsible to ensure his/her teams align with the overall Epic Together guiding principles, values (ASPIRE) and plan in support of cultural and clinical transformation objectives.

The Epic Director of Clinical Applications is expected to be knowledgeable about organizational policies, procedures and business operations, as well as the area of business they are representing and the functionality available in the application(s).  The Director is responsible for inclusively guiding and facilitating organizational stakeholders, team members, consultant resources, and Epic’s installation resources to ensure that all goals are achieved efficiently, effectively and with integrity.

Qualifications

Education

• Preferred: Master’s degree in Health Care, Behavioral Health, Information Technology, Business, or related field
• Minimum: Bachelor’s degree or equivalent years of relevant work experience

Work Experience:

• Preferred: Seven (7) to Eight (8) years’ experience in a Behavioral Health setting
• Minimum: Five (5) years relevant experience
• Experience in a leadership role(s) involved with implementing financial/clinical information systems and/or large-scale and complex standardization and implementation of an enterprise EHR
• Superior organizational and people management skills
• Superior ability to interact with multidisciplinary teams
• Demonstrated ability to align and motivate key process stakeholders, including therapists, social workers, nurses, physicians, and other clinical/administrative staff
• Strong assertiveness skills and ability to manage conflict in a variety of situations
• Demonstrated knowledge and work experience in outpatient departments, with particular emphasis on experience coordinating across locations
• Demonstrated workflow process analysis and design, communication and interpersonal skills, facilitation/training skills, project management capabilities, and leadership orientation
• Experience in Epic installations preferred

Licenses and Certifications:

• Preferred:  Licensed as a Clinical Therapist, Social Worker or RN

• Minimum: Obtaining applicable certification will be an expectation of the role
• Applicant is expected to maintain certification as current by completing New Version Training (NVT), as applicable
• For Clinical Applications, clinical licensure is preferred

Key Competencies

• Adaptability/flexibility: demonstrating flexibility with respect to changing end-user business needs
• Critical thinking: the ability and willingness to see things in an open-minded way and examine an idea or concept from as many angles as possible
• Dependability: the ability and willingness to take ownership of work activities and ensure that they are completed in an accurate, efficient, and timely manner. Must be detail-oriented with strong organizational skills and able to function effectively in a fast-paced environment and meet deadlines
• Initiative: the ability and willingness to recognize assignments or tasks that need to be completed, to seek out additional assignments or tasks, and to help others
• Interpersonal skills: the ability to communicate information clearly and concisely with project leadership and subject matter experts; the ability to gain trust and establish effective relationships with Epic counterparts
• Learning: the ability and willingness to learn new software and systems
• Listening: listening attentively to ensure that the intended message has been accurately received, holding responses until the person has finished making their point, and repeating information to ensure accuracy
• Problem solving: seeking, logically examining, and interpreting information from different sources to determine a problem's cause and developing a course of action to resolve the problem and to prevent its recurrence
• Resilience: the ability to persevere in difficult situations, overcome obstacles, and reach high levels of performance when faced with stressful work situations and time pressures

Responsibilities

The Director of Behavioral Health Applications is responsible for all core activities pertaining to the staffing, budgeting, planning, execution, and support of applications related to the Epic Applications. In addition to the duties discussed in the Role Description, the Director is also responsible for the following:

1. Team & Application Management

• Staffing and coaching of team members and closing gaps involving competency through training
• Maintaining employee relations in accordance with RWJBH policies and procedures
• Establishing clear and specific performance standards and expectations for team members.
• Following through on requests and inquiries from team members and responds to them in a timely manner. Is visible and accessible to staff.  Conducts frequent staff meetings.
• Applying policies and procedures consistently for all team members.
• Conducting staff performance appraisals on time in accordance with policy timeframes.
• Effectively allocating and scheduling resources. Utilizing resources, both labor and non-labor to maximize efficiency and quality.
• Working effectively with other leaders to ensure the optimal delivery of service to the customer
• Developing and documenting internal procedures that will be used in conjunction with the applications
• Setting standards for naming and numbering conventions, security classifications, and documentation
• Prioritizing changes requested for the system
• Coordinating software updates and changes with users
• Reviewing new vendor software releases and updates to help determine which features will be utilized
• Providing senior management with regular status reports for all reporting areas.

1. Project Leadership & Management

• Demonstrating self-direction and ability to direct integrated project deliverables.

• Working collaboratively to ensure the system meets business needs in regard to the project deliverables and timeline
• Maintaining regular communication including leading in regular project team meetings
• Responding timely to escalation of issues and questions
• Communicating regularly with other leaders to resolve issues, conflicts and application integrations
• Ensuring that appropriate subject matter experts are involved in design, configuration and testing sessions
• Facilitating the development of integrated workflows by working closely with the project team, subject matter experts and technical leads to define processes that cross applications and functional areas
• Guiding workflow design, building and testing the system, and analyzing other technical issues associated with Epic software
• Holding regular communications with team members to discuss the status of deliverables, shared issues, end-user concerns, budget, and upcoming milestones

1. Planning

• Working with key users to assess their information needs, including and but not limited to physicians, clinicians, and department heads.

• Providing direction and advice to senior management in anticipating the information needs of the customer.
• Working with senior management to review and prioritize system requests
• Planning for and assessing integration requirements of systems
• Researching and evaluating emerging information technologies to be assimilated, integrated and introduced within the organization.
• Developing short and long range goals and objectives consistent with the Information Systems Strategic Plan.
• Preparing and monitoring operating and capital budgets.
• Establishing and maintaining an inventory of projects/applications requested, in progress, implemented and on hold.

1. Customer Support & Experience

• Promoting a compassionate and supportive environment
• Demonstrating effort to provide prompt and consistent service
• Identifying issues that arise in the application area(s) as well as issues that impact other application and technical teams and working collaboratively to resolve them.
• Managing and executing identified mitigation plans
• Developing a support model inclusive of on-call support
• Reviewing the status of projects and issues on an ongoing basis with operational leadership, which includes the creation of status reports