Nemours Children's Heath, Delaware Valley (NCHDV) is seeking a transformational, innovative, strategic and collaborative physician executive to serve as the VP of Medical Practice for one of the country's premier children's healthcare systems. NCHDV has 895 credentialed clinical staff with 450 employed physicians, a quaternary care multi-specialty hospital with large hospital-based specialty and primary care practices, 21 community primary care practices, 9 ambulatory specialty centers, 2 ambulatory surgery centers and pediatric inpatient and neonatology services at several partner hospitals. Nemours Children's Hospital, DE has the state's only level 4 NICU, pediatric bone marrow and solid organ transplant programs, Car-T, level 1 trauma center, and other highly specialized programs.

The faculty serve as the Pediatric Department of the Sidney Kimmel Medical College, Thomas Jefferson University. Nemours has a significant educational and academic mission, which includes over 600 trainees annually, and medical and osteopathic students from Sidney Kimmel Medical College, Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine, Rowan Medical School, and Drexel and Temple Schools of Medicine. Nemours Research is the home of two large COBRE grants and a robust extramurally funded research program. NCH is a member of the PEDSNET research consortium and ECHO IDeA States Pediatric Clinical Trials Network.

This position is a critical physician leadership role for the Health System and serves as a member of the DV Executive Leadership team, with significant influence on the organization's direction.

The VP of Medical Practice will oversee and lead growth of the hospital based and ambulatory physician practice that combines high quality, evidence-based medicine with academic rigor and will collaborate on leading value-based practice transformation. A priority will be to foster an engaged, aligned physician faculty, inclusive of the recruitment and retention of tomorrow's luminaries to support current and future signature program development. The VP of Medical Practice will champion and support diversity, equity, and inclusion and is responsible for ensuring that the physician workforce exemplifies the Nemours Standards of Behaviors and Values. This role will be a critical voice for clinical effectiveness and integration and will advance the Enterprise Strategic Goals that provide a roadmap for commitment to a culture of excellence and inclusion and patient centered care across the Nemours enterprise. The VP of Medical Practice will be responsible for financial stewardship of the practice and analysis of existing or proposed programs and services. These critical tasks will contribute to the ongoing transformation of Nemours to a successful highly integrated system committed to improving child health and to creating the healthiest generations of children.

More specifically, the VP of Medical Practice will:

1. Ensure that the Nemours Delaware Valley physicians practice evidence-based patient centered medicine with focus on excellence in patient care service and delivery, health equity, safety, quality, and outcomes.
2. Manage the physician workforce, specifically recruitment and retention, emphasizing the development and engagement of individuals throughout the life cycle of their specialty and affirming Nemours is a destination center for the recruitment of the best in the healthcare workforce.
3. Ensure that care is delivered in an environment of learning and inquiry.
4. Set the tone and expectation of respect and inclusiveness for the entire workforce.
5. Be a committed practitioner and advocate of continuous improvement and transformation across the Enterprise.
6. Prioritize and support diversity, equity, and inclusion activity in the medical practice.

The VP of Medical Practice will provide supervision and oversight of:

1. All ambulatory specialty practices
2. Primary Care in collaboration with the Medical Director of Primary Care
   1. Hospital based clinical programs such as ECMO, Pheresis, Telemedicine, Transport, and other orphan programs

Summary of Position

The VP of Medical Practice has two main areas of responsibilities:

• Physician oversight of the Nemours Physician Practice for the Delaware Valley.
• Serve as a key member of the DV Executive Leadership Team, which oversees DV operations across New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, and Pennsylvania.

This executive is accountable for the largest physician component of the Nemours enterprise and will work in close collaboration with their Florida counterparts and with the regional President and the Nemours Chief Physician Executive and the Chief Nursing and Patient Care Services Officer. This role will be accountable for creating and leading clinical direction, strategy, growth, and establishing performance targets for physicians in DV.

Reporting to the VP of Medical Practice are the following:

• Department Chairs of Anesthesia, Pathology, Radiology, Pediatrics, Cardiology
• Chief Medical Partnership Officer
• Chief Quality and Safety Officer
• Ambulatory Medical Director

The Chief Medical Officer, Regional Ambulatory Medical Directors (PA and NJ), Chief of Primary Care, and the DV Practice Administrator will have dotted line reporting to the VP of Medical Practice.

The VP of Medical Practice reports directly to the President of Nemours Delaware Valley Operations and has dotted line reporting to the Nemours Chief Physician Executive. The VP of Medical Practice will work closely with the following DV leaders: Chief Operations Officer, the Chief Strategy and Business Development Officer, Chief Nurse Executive, and the Surgeon-in-Chief.

1. Be viewed as a visible, credible member of the local and national leadership teams, perceived by both physicians and other executive team members as having an enterprise viewpoint. He/she/they should be able to quickly absorb large amounts of information distilling them into a concise understanding of Nemours current performance and future aspirations, making significant contributions to both.
2. Cultivate a culture of excellence and high reliability in the delivery of clinical services and clinical practice standards across the Nemours enterprise to ensure maximum patient safety and the highest quality of care.
3. Collaborate with the Executive Leadership Team to develop and support the implementation of the strategic plan, including evaluation of physician engagement and retention, quality and safety, operational effectiveness, clinical and academic pre-eminence, growth, partnerships across the Enterprise, and financial stewardship.
4. Serve as champion for medical practice diversity and inclusion activities, including the promotion of diverse hiring practices, creating a pipeline for those underrepresented in medicine, and supporting a culture that promotes inclusion. This leader will also promote health equity in patient care.
5. Serve as a key liaison between administration and the Department Chairs. Keep the Executive Leadership Team informed on medical staff matters, and inform the medical staff of organizational plans, financial status, resource utilization and medical staffing as appropriate. Establish clear lines of responsibility and accountability within departments and between medical administrative functions.
6. Lead and develop a physician resource plan and strategy for recruitment and retention including developing innovative compensation plan to incentivize physician alignment and engagement, patient access, compliance with clinical integration protocols and quality initiatives.
7. Provide guidance in the development of clinical pathways and outcomes.
8. Oversee analysis of data relevant to care and service delivery. Work closely with attending physicians, case managers, utilization review personnel, and insurance companies to efficiently utilize hospital resources and develop outcome improvement plans. Participate in financial and quantitative analysis, expense management, and monitoring of existing or proposed programs and services.

The VP of Medical Practice is expected to advance the following areas. Several are potentially multi-year initiatives and some may involve matrix accountability; others may require delegation.

Relationships

1. Understand and embrace the mission, vision and goals of Nemours and the strength of the organization's unparalleled focus on what is best for patients and their families.
2. Achieve the goals of the Five-Year Strategic Plan
3. Create linkages with Florida counterparts; creating standardization and synergies where necessary and possible. Demonstrate an enterprise viewpoint. Responsible for the largest number of physicians within the Health System, this individual is a strong clinical voice on the Executive Leadership team and drives clinical direction and performance.
4. Become familiar with the culture, structure, and scope of Nemours, learning how decisions are made and who needs to be involved to create buy-in.
5. Engage in, and become a part of, the community and serve as "one of the faces of Nemours."
6. Become viewed internally as a senior leader for the multi-state Health System.

Physician Engagement

1. Evaluate the findings of the physician satisfaction and engagement survey and work in collaboration with the Chief Wellness and Chief Equity Officers to craft an appropriate strategy and action plan to address any areas for improvement. Areas of focus should include satisfaction, engagement, burnout, diversity, and inclusion.
2. Support Chairs in attainment of Departmental goals, alignment with enterprise strategy and attracting the best and brightest talent to develop new and support existing luminary programs.
3. Establish themselves as the senior on-site representative for the Medical Group, creating credibility through performance, with the potential for internal promotion.

Operations

1. Manage current strategic partnerships and evaluate additional opportunities as they arise.
2. Grow patient volumes and profitability through enhanced access, use of technology, assisting physicians in operational efficiencies, participation in payer and network relationships, expense and resource management, and revenue cycle maximization.

Resource Management

1. Evaluate effectiveness of departmental structures, empower chairs to manage budgets in a manner that they attain departmental goals for revenue, growth, quality, safety, patient and family-centered care, recruitment, academic output, and other established metrics.
2. Assess that the clinical delivery team is working "at top of licensure." Evaluate use of non-physician clinical supports such as Medical Assistants, Advanced Practice Nurses, and Physician Assistants to maximize productivity, access, quality, and patient/family satisfaction.

Quality and Safety

1. Advance the "culture of safety" and a Just Culture
2. Encourage reporting of failures or near misses, and use incidents as teaching moments, recognizing those who report as "safety champions."
3. Improve accessibility and transparency of data.
4. Focus on achieving Hospital Acquired Infection and Safety goals

Culture

1. Support opportunistic high value hires with appropriate resources, accompanied by business planning and defined goals and outcomes.
2. Strengthen the academic mission, scholarly activities, and output. Support Chairs in mentoring faculty that have research and academic promotional aspirations.
3. Be visible, accessible, and known by attending huddles, rounding, creating forums for exchange of information and ideas among Chairs/Chiefs, and team building.
4. Advance inclusion and diversity. Proactively mentor underrepresented minorities.

Serve as a member of the following Internal Committees:

• Delaware Valley Leadership
• Medical Executive Council
• Leadership Council
• DV and Enterprise Strategic Initiative Management
• Chairs and Chiefs; CMOs
• Incident Command
• Financial Stewardship Council
• Quality and Safety leadership meetings
• Enterprise Physician Compensation
• Enterprise Claims Committee

External Committees:

• Children's Hospital Association CMO Group
• Jefferson/Nemours strategic planning meetings
• Clinical Partnership and Outreach leadership meetings