Manager, Ambulatory Capacity Management

About Us

As a not-for-profit organization, Mass General Brigham is committed to supporting patient care, research, teaching, and service to the community by leading innovation across our system. Founded by Brigham and Women's Hospital and Massachusetts General Hospital, Mass General Brigham supports a complete continuum of care including community and specialty hospitals, a managed care organization, a physician network, community health centers, home care, and other health-related entities. Several of our hospitals are teaching affiliates of Harvard Medical School, and our system is a national leader in biomedical research.

We're focused on a people-first culture for our system's patients and our professional family. That's why we provide our employees with more ways to achieve their potential. Mass General Brigham is committed to aligning our employees' personal aspirations with projects that match their capabilities and creating a culture that empowers our managers to become trusted mentors. We support each member of our team to own their personal development-and we recognize success at every step.

Our employees use the Mass General Brigham values to govern decisions, actions, and behaviors. These values guide how we get our work done: Patients, Affordability, Accountability & Service Commitment, Decisiveness, Innovation & Thoughtful Risk; and how we treat each other: Diversity & Inclusion, Integrity & Respect, Learning, Continuous Improvement & Personal Growth, Teamwork & Collaboration.

The Opportunity

The Ambulatory Capacity Management (ACM) department, as part of Ambulatory Operations & Services, consults with the Ambulatory practices within the Mass General Brigham enterprise, to manage and optimize provider schedules with the goal of helping Ambulatory practices achieve ambulatory access and scheduling goals. The ACM department's primary responsibilities include maintaining provider templates, consulting with practices to maintain Epic decision tree and other scheduling build, and to analyze demand and capacity data to create actionable recommendations for improvement.

Reporting to the Director of Ambulatory Capacity Management, the Manager serves as a leader within the ACM Department, directing the daily activities and development of template coordinators and access analysts. The Manager is also tasked with developing strong partnerships with colleagues across the MGB enterprise, including clinical and operational department leaders, project managers, MGB Epic application teams, and data/analytics teams.

The ACM Manager provides direct supervision to 4-8 members of the ACM team. Oversight includes management of resources in the effective execution and evaluation of teamwork assignments and deliverables. In addition, this role requires experience in ACM areas of focus. The Manager is also expected to keep a focus on building strong team culture and individual team member development. Specifically, coaching and mentoring, including review of the annual competency model development plans. The ACM Manager will also have the ability and expectation to manage within a matrixed organization additional staff, who may work directly on his/her initiatives, but have a separate direct Human Resources reporting relationship.

This position requires relationship building with clinical department leaders to drive ongoing improvement of patient access through optimal scheduling design and utilization of provider templates/capacity. The ACM Manager will oversee a wide range of activities pertaining management of ambulatory scheduling workflow and technical build design, provider schedule template management and will be called upon to perform in-depth analysis and auditing to support the governance of scheduling and capacity functions in the Ambulatory setting.

Principal Duties and Responsibilities

Management Responsibilities

● Directly supervises 4-10 direct FTEs including, but not limited to:

o Day-to-day operations of daily intake requests from ambulatory practices.

o Conducting weekly 1x1s, quarterly, bi-annual, and annual evaluations.

o Professional development and continued growth of direct reports.

o Operational aspects of project and scope, including guiding team members in the execution of tasks and responsibilities related to:

Design and adoption of access related tools and technology.

Maintenance and optimization of clinic templates, scheduling workflows and scheduling tools.

Consultation and support for ongoing technical operations and upgrades.

o Collaborates with Project Managers and the Digital team on the creation or modification of visit types, blocks, centers, and other scheduling functionalities.

Updates scheduling templates as appropriate to align with any design changes.

Opens and closes provider templates, distributing 'bump list", and both manages and monitors progress/updates.

● Oversee, monitor, and support, in collaboration with Ambulatory leadership, internal processes essential to day-to-day operations of the team, such as:

o Participate in interviewing, training, supervising, and evaluating personnel.

o Assessing capacity management needs and applying appropriate resource allocation to meet the daily operational needs of client Ambulatory practices, project needs and continued development of the ACM program across Mass General Brigham.

o Participate in the development, implementation, and ongoing optimization of operational systems and processes, focusing on practice operations.

● Act as an escalation point for ACM with clinical department leadership in all ambulatory divisions across Mass General Brigham. These consultative relationships are meant to advise senior leaders on how to interpret analytical data and make technical adjustments to improve access to provider schedules.

Program Responsibilities:

• Ensure ACM department meets SLAs for Epic-based scheduling workflows and template and capacity related design and build.

• In partnership with department leadership, assess new work/project requests for viability, staffing and timing and coordinate assignments for the lifecycle of assigned projects.

o Implement assigned staffing needs for each project to execute and meet project deliverables; submit proposals to department leadership for review and approval.

o Serve as a resource and mentor to staff including coaching and feedback. Manage template analyst staff work distribution and priorities in partnership with department leadership, monitor productivity and ensure quality deliverables are met for assigned projects.

o Monitor staffing, performance, metrics, etc. to identify areas for collaboration, consolidation, and improvement.

o Develop and participate in team-building activities to promote high performance among colleagues.

o Manage interviewing, onboarding and orientation for new staff members.

• Develop, communicate, and hold assigned project staff accountable for project timelines, key performance indicators, and project deliverables.

• Manage communication plan to keep leadership and clinical department stakeholders apprised of SLAs, key performance measures, build cycles and timelines, opportunities for improvement through new technology or operational redesign efforts.

• Create, implement, train and maintain processes and work systems that enable optimum performance of template analyst team including standardized approaches, documentation and tools.

• Gather and compile information and reports to understand demand-capacity imbalances, identifying access barriers related to templates and Epic decision trees, and optimizing the use of all applicable Epic functionality, specifically related to scheduling/access.

• Collaborate with other management peers across Mass General Brigham in the continued development and evolution of Ambulatory Capacity Management at MGB.

• Serve as subject matter expert in template design and scheduling functionality to support practice leaders, project team members and department colleagues. Research, apply and communicate best practices to the team and to stakeholders within clinical departments.

• Build and maintain effective relationships with practice leaders. Establish relationships with clinical department stakeholders and other management personnel sufficient to ensure effective communication regarding health of collaboration and future direction of joint work efforts.

• Participate in projects, meetings and other responsibilities as assigned.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's Degree required; Master's Degree, preferred (e.g., MBA/MPH/MHA)

• Minimum of 5 years of experience in healthcare clinic operations with familiarity with EHR scheduling workflows.

• Minimum of 3 years direct experience managing in a technical/build environment

• Exceptions may be made for candidates with less experience possessing exceptional skills and expertise.

• Ability to generate and encourage creative ideas, innovative thinking, and imaginative solutions to issues or problems.

• Proven track record of maintaining the highest standards of performance, quality, credibility, and integrity.

• Strong/Advanced computer skills required.

• Experience facilitating and coordinating meetings with various diverse functional groups and stakeholders in person and virtual.

• Technical aptitude to fully understand and obtain the knowledge required to effectively collaborate with Ambulatory Operations & Services colleagues and Digital Team counterparts.

Skills, Abilities and Competencies Required

• Demonstrated ability to interact with all members of the organization in ways that enhance understanding, respect, cooperation, and problem solving.

• Direct experience with customer relations, problem solving and conflict management.

• Excellent interpersonal skills required along with experience in working with multi-disciplinary groups.

• Excellent attention to detail.

• Strong analytic and decision-making abilities.

• Proficient to expert level Excel user.

• Knowledgeable and comfortable with Visio.

• Strong communication skills- written, verbal, and listening.

• Ability to generate and encourage creative ideas, innovative thinking, and imaginative solutions to issues or problems.

• Proven track record of maintaining the highest standards of performance, quality, credibility, and integrity.

Working Conditions

• Hybrid role with at least 80% of time spent working remotely.

• May be required to travel to any location within the Mass General Brigham enterprise, though most on-site meetings will take place in the Boston metro area. As projects and priorities dictate, non-standard work hours might be needed.

Supervisory and Fiscal Responsibilities

• Responsible for oversight of 4-10 ACM team members

• Prudent use of resources within MGB Enterprise