Hospitalist Medical Director

Dignity Health Medical Group is actively seeking a highly patient-centric physician to serve as a Hospitalist Medical Director at our hospitals Chandler Regional Medical Center and Mercy Gilbert Medical Center. 

Chandler Regional Medical Center (CRMC) is a full-service acute care hospital with 100+ intensive care beds located just outside of downtown Phoenix. The hospital has approximately 78,000 emergency department annual visits and is the busiest Level 1 trauma center in the state of Arizona, with over 5000 trauma activations annually. It is also a primary stroke center, high volume neurosurgery center, and provides high acuity cardiovascular and cardiac surgery services. Critical care services are provided in house, 24 hours a day, by attending intensivists.

Mercy Gilbert Medical Center is a full-service 197-bed community hospital located east of Chandler. It is one of the busiest L&D sites in the state, and sees approximately 49,000 annual ED visits. A new joint-venture between Phoenix Children’s Hospital and CommonSpirit Health will be opening, providing high risk obstetric services.  Critical care services are provided in house, 24 hours a day, by attending intensivists.

Overview

Excellence in Hospital Medicine is essential to the CommonSpirit Health mission.  The Hospitalist Medical Director leads their team in ensuring all hospital medicine efforts have a patient-centered focus, and in meeting important objectives in clinical quality, stewardship, patient experience, provider engagement, and academics.  In this role the Medical Director has overall responsibility for day-to-day operations and is accountable to hospital and medical group leadership for operational excellence of the program, as well as  achievement of key metrics.  The scope of this responsibility includes partnering with educational leadership at the facilities to ensure the hospital medicine program meets educational objectives.  Additional scope include management of both contracted hospitalists and hospitalists employed by the Dignity Health Medical Group.  The Medical Director is  supported by hospital, divisional and CommonSpirit Health leadership.  

Performance Improvement and Accountability - The Site Medical Director is responsible for the performance of the  group as measured by agreed upon Hospital Medicine KPIs.

• Regularly reviews hospitalist KPIs and works with his/her team to formulate and implement improvement plans.
• Leads a regular (at least quarterly)  program review with hospital administration and CommonSpirit Health Hospital Medicine.  This reviews team member performance and engagement, quality goals, patient experience, academic goals if the program has an academic mission, throughput and efficiency, and program budget.  He/She ensures that mutually agreed upon improvements are implemented.
• Engages in and cooperates in the furtherance of teaching, research, and educational activities of the Hospital, as requested.
• Ensures that there is a schedule and that scheduling processes are well understood, fair and meet the needs of the hospital and patients.
• Together with his/her team develops and maintains care protocols and guidelines to be used by the hospitalists. 
• With appropriate partners, leads implementation of key clinical processes, such as Multidisciplinary Rounds (MDRs) and patient handoffs.
• Along with care management, ensures team ownership of key throughput metrics and improvement efforts.
• Partners with the hospital CMO on performance improvement.
• Manages staffing within the hospitalist program budget.  This includes reviewing coding distributions with providers and coaching improvement where needed.
• Ensures a robust partnership with local CDI resources and that hospitalists know and follow best clinical documentation practices.

Team Leadership, Engagement and Development - The Medical Director leads their team by creating a team environment and culture conducive to excellence in Hospital Medicine.

• Chairs a monthly site Hospital Medicine staff meeting which focuses on high performance of the program.  
• Encourages open and honest communication between team members.
• Ensures prompt resolution of interpersonal conflict.
• Strives to maximize the professional growth and engagement of each team member and ensures everyone’s full contribution. 
• Supports each hospitalist.   Understands and appreciates each hospitalists’ contribution to team success.
• Creates within the group team based care models that allow physicians and APPs to provide clinical care consistent with their licensure and the hospital by-laws, rules and regulations.
• Encourages hospitalists’ input.  Coaches team members to make contributions that improve care processes and clinical operations. 
• Conducts performance review sessions with each hospitalist annually. These sessions are focused on clinical quality, growth and engagement of each team member, and include team member evaluations.  
• Assures that performance improvement plans are in place when needed and leads performance improvement sessions for hospitalists as needed per local HR policy.
• Ensures that hospitalists are recognized for their positive contributions to the group and hospital.
• Rounds regularly on each team member to ensure continued engagement.
• Is an active participant in all aspects of provider recruiting including candidate interviews.  Engages their team in recruiting activities. 
• Approves new hires to ensure team compatibility.
• Leads the onboarding of each new hire.

• Serves as a role model for all team members in all aspects of Hospital Medicine.
• Ensures key administrative processes are in place and followed, such as scheduling, charge capture, and patient assignments.  
• Ensures that the Hospital Medicine group has and follows work standards.
• Ensures group participation in the yearly medical staff engagement survey.  Reviews survey results and partners with the CMO on action planning for group improvement where needed.

Improving the Environment of Care - The Medical Director is responsible to ensure that their team is partnering with the medical staff and administrative leadership to improve hospital, Physician Enterprise, and division wide care processes. 

• Ensures hospital committee participation by team members and follow-up reporting and presentation in monthly meetings.  Also ensures service on relevant Physician Enterprise and market/division committees with follow-up reporting.
• Motivates team members to commit to the creative improvement of their hospital’s clinical care and operations. 
• Advises and assists Hospital to ensure full compliance with all requirements of The Joint Commission, all State licensing requirements, and all other relevant requirements promulgated by any federal, state, or local agency.

Key Relationships - The Medical Director represents the Hospital Medicine program, is accountable to the hospital and medical staff leadership, and ensures productive clinical relationships that foster excellent care.  The Medical Director connects with peers throughout the organization to work together on best practices.

• Assures the hospitalist group has a strong, professional relationship with community physicians and advanced practice providers.
• Established a constructive relationship with the leaders of contracted hospitalist groups to ensure the program objectives are clear and aligned with hospital and CSH objectives, to anticipate staffing needs, to coordinate recruiting and onboarding, and to review the individual performance of the hospitalists employed by the contracted groups and coordinate any needed performance improvement plans.
• Establishes processes to ensure that care transitions are safe and patient centric.
• Strives to build a hospital environment that promotes trust and collegiality through healthy working relations with the hospital’s medical staff, nursing, clinical documentation specialists, and ancillary services.
• Partners with other specialties on care processes and co-management agreements.
• Reports to the MEC at their request.  
• Where it is organized, be an active part of a market or divisional hospital medicine leadership team.
• Coordinate and integrate team operations with the program directors of the GME programs at the hospital to ensure educational objectives are accomplished.
• Establish a constructive working relationship with the program administrative dyad and collaborates with their dyad on hospital medicine operational decisions and implementation plans.
• Is an active participant in National Hospital Medicine Meetings.   Assures that CommonSpirit Hospital Medicine initiatives and programs are implemented in his/her program.
• Work with facility CMO to ensure that the program’s objectives and hospital’s clinical objective are aligned
• Collaborates effectively with medical group CMO to meet medical group’s and CSH objectives

Other Responsibilities:

• Be an active clinical hospitalist at the site(s) where serving as Medical Director.
• Ensures Hospital Medicine partnership with clinical informatics for EHR optimization.
• Anticipates and plans for program growth.
• Perform such other reasonable duties as may be assigned from time to time by the Hospital President, the Board of Directors and/or Community Board, and the Chief of the Medical Staff.
• Attends compliance training as may be requested by the Hospital to comply with any CommonSpirit Health Corporate Integrity Agreement(s), as applicable.

Structure

• This position is .5 clinical and .5 administrative.  The Medical Director is responsible to ensure that their clinical productivity and clinical duty hours meet their clinical FTE requirement
• This position reports to the CMO of the Dignity Health Medical Group, with matrix reporting to the facility CMO

Dignity Health, one of the largest healthcare systems in the nation, is a growing organization with well-resourced, modern facilities and diverse practice opportunities. With more than 39 acute care hospitals in three states and 9,000 physicians, Dignity Health touches the lives of thousands of people and provides nearly $2 billion in charity care to the communities it serves.

Dignity Health Medical Group  is the employed physician group serving the Arizona Service Area. Covering over 45 practice sites, complementing clinical services with translational and bench research, our integrated medical group employs in excess of 250 healthcare providers throughout the valley. Dignity Health Medical Group is continuously expanding in order to meet the needs of the growing patient population in Arizona. With a unified vision of becoming an organization where physicians, care teams and staff come to do their best work--and patients come for the best care--Dignity Health Medical Group is searching for exceptional talent that is patient focused and team-oriented, who can become a part of our mission-driven organization.