Manager, Quality Improvement (Surgical Services)

Nemours Children's Health is seeking a Manager, Quality Improvement (Surgical Services) to join our team in Wilmington, Delaware.

The Manager, Quality Improvement – Surgical Services provides operational leadership for all quality improvement (QI), patient safety, and performance improvement activities within the Department of Surgery. Leads and executes the administrative, strategic, and clinical direction of the Surgical Quality and Patient Safety Program in collaboration with the Medical Director of Surgical Quality and Safety. Reporting to the Director of Quality and in conjunction with the CQSO, this role oversees the day-to-day management of surgical quality infrastructure, ensures alignment with enterprise quality and safety priorities, and partners with surgical, anesthesia, nursing, and operational leaders to improve outcomes across the surgical continuum of care.

This role serves as the primary point of accountability for departmental surgical quality work, translating strategic priorities into executable improvement initiatives, ensuring methodological rigor, and supporting sustainment of gains. The Manager supervises surgical Quality Improvement Specialists and Safety Quality Specialists, in addition to also supporting improvement initiatives to prioritize and coordinate new initiatives promoting optimal care of the surgical patient, and enables multidisciplinary teams to achieve measurable, data-driven improvements.

Surgical Quality Oversight: 

• In partnership with the Medical Director of Surgical Quality and Safety oversees the Department of Surgery’s quality improvement portfolio, ensuring alignment with organizational goals and national standards; prioritize initiatives, monitor progress, and drive performance improvement strategies to optimize surgical outcomes and patient safety.

Quality Improvement Program Management:

• Works alongside a team of clinical experts to formulate, drive, and lead projects (from idea inception through implementation and sustainment of results) using process improvement methodologies (e.g., Lean, Six Sigma, PDSA), project management strategies, facilitation, and change management to achieve improvements in operational and/or clinical outcomes.
• Oversee the planning, execution, monitoring, and sustainment of multidisciplinary surgical QI initiatives.
• Ensure consistent application of improvement methodologies.
• Support identification and prioritization of improvement opportunities using data analysis, safety events, audits, patient feedback, and frontline input.

Data, Measurement, and Reporting:

• Collaborate with analytics, registry teams, and clinical leaders to define meaningful measures and monitor outcomes and process reliability. Supervises the creation of dashboards and collection, coding, validation, and analysis of data used to guide performance improvement activities
• Ensure timely review, interpretation, and dissemination of surgical quality data, including dashboards, scorecards, and external benchmark reports.
• Prepare and present concise, actionable reports for surgical leadership, quality councils, and governance committees.

Staff Leadership and Development:

• Provide direct supervision, coaching, and performance management for surgical quality improvement staff.
• Build quality improvement capability within the Department of Surgery by mentoring clinicians and operational leaders in improvement science and change management.
• Promote a culture of psychological safety, accountability, and continuous learning.

Collaboration and Representation:

• Serve as a key partner to surgeons, nursing leaders, perioperative services, and administrative stakeholders.
• Facilitate effective multidisciplinary collaboration across service lines and care settings.
• Represent the Department of Surgery in organizational quality, safety, and performance improvement forums as assigned.

Patient Safety:

• Monitor implementation and effectiveness of action plans to ensure sustained improvement.
• Identifies trends and sentinel events; and assists with outlining corrective action plans, which includes preparation and implementation of clinical protocols and practice-management guidelines in conjunction with senior leadership.

Job Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in healthcare, nursing, public health, quality, or a related field required.  Master’s degree in healthcare administration, nursing, public health, quality, or a related field strongly preferred.
• Minimum of 7 (seven) years professional quality or improvement experience required; 10 years experience preferred.
• Progressive experience in healthcare quality improvement, patient safety, or performance improvement required.
• Demonstrated experience leading multidisciplinary improvement initiatives in a complex healthcare environment required.
• Strong knowledge of quality improvement methodologies, data analysis, and change management required.
• CPHQ required upon hire.  LSSGB preferred.
• Experience supervising or mentoring quality improvement professionals preferred.
• Pediatric clinical and/or experience in surgical, perioperative, or procedural care settings preferred.

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