Assistant Director, Laboratory Operations Management

KAISER; Oakland (CA); On-site; USD 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Job summary

NALHE is seeking a Senior Laboratory Manager to oversee the daily operations of the clinical laboratory, ensure timely and accurate reporting, and manage both credentialed and non-credentialed personnel. The role emphasizes quality assurance, safety, regulatory compliance, and accreditation standards within a labor management partnership environment.

Responsibilities include talent development, strategic planning for performance, and cross-functional leadership to drive improvements in testing

Qualifications

• Leads and develops teams; fosters growth, coaching, and performance feedback.
• Ensures competency in laboratory testing and bench work as needed.
• Maintains compliance with QA, safety, regulatory, and accreditation standards.

Responsibilities

• Creates and advocates for developmental opportunities for others; builds collaborative relationships across teams.
• Manages units by translating plans into actions; ensures policies are followed and resources meet requirements.
• Oversees staff training, competency, and succession planning; tracks performance and addresses issues.
• Maintains training standards by developing materials and ensuring staff competency.
• Ensures compliance and accreditation by aligning with regulations and updating documentation.
• Links medical lab services with other services; coordinates with stakeholders and vendors.
• Improves lab operations focusing on quality, safety, efficiency, and service.

Job description

Job Summary:

In addition to the responsibilities listed below, this position is also responsible for ensuring timely and accurate laboratory reporting in the section they oversee; overseeing day-to-day operations of the clinical laboratory in a labor management partnership environment, including both credentialed and non-credentialed personnel; maintaining competency in laboratory testing and performing bench work as appropriate; and overseeing quality assurance, safety, compliance, regulatory, and accreditation standards and activities.

Essential Responsibilities:

• Creates and advocates for developmental opportunities for others; builds collaborative, cross-functional relationships. Solicits and acts on performance feedback; works with leaders and employees to set goals and provide open feedback and coaching to drive performance improvement. Pursues professional growth; hires, trains, and develops talent for growth opportunities; strategically evaluates talent for succession planning; sets performance management guidelines and expectations across teams / units. Oversees implementation, adapts, and stays up to date with organizational change, challenges, feedback, best practices, processes, and industry trends; shares best practices within and across teams. Fosters open dialogue amongst team members, engages, motivates, and promotes collaboration within and across teams; motivates teams to meet business objectives. Delegates tasks and decisions as appropriate; provides appropriate support, guidance and scope; encourages development and consideration of options in decision making; fosters access to stakeholders.
• Manages designated units or teams by translating business plans into tactical action items; oversees the completion of work assignments and identifies opportunities for improvement; ensures all policies and procedures are followed; partners with key stakeholders and business leaders to ensure products and/or services meet requirements and expectations while aligning with departmental strategies. Aligns team efforts; builds accountability for and measuring progress in achieving results; assumes responsibility for decision making; fosters direct reports to resolve escalated issues as appropriate. Communicates goals and objectives; incorporates resources, costs, and forecasts into team and unit plans; ensures matrixed resources are fulfilling service or performance requirements across reporting lines. Removes obstacles that impact performance; identifies and addresses improvement opportunities; guides performance and develops contingency plans accordingly; influences teams and units to operate in alignment with operational and business objectives.
• Maintains testing and training standards by: advocating for the departments strategic initiatives and the development and implementation of technical and/or non-technical training materials while also resolving issues related to training and/or training resources; ensuring relevant personnel competency meets defined standards; and developing strategies to meet future training needs, aligning regular, in-service, and competency training programs with those future needs, and completing own training.
• Maintains compliance and accreditation by: defining and communicating policies and work instructions in alignment with applicable regulations, license requirements, accreditation standards, and inspection checklists pertaining to laboratories and facilities where testing is performed; ensuring assessment of adherence to all requirements related to the recruitment, processing, testing, storage, and distribution of materials and samples; implementing innovative corrective and preventive actions for addressing escalated, higher complexity, technical and/or non-technical deficiencies in regulatory/accreditation inspection processes; overseeing the renewal process for all applicable licensure; and ensuring updates are made to technical and/or non-technical documentation.
• Serves as a link between medical laboratory services and other services by: managing strategic planning and implementation related to regulatory/accreditation changes and issues, inspection citations, current events, and trends relevant to services, quality, and training; empowering cross-functional teams to proactively evaluate and improve technical and/or non-technical quality management systems; networking and collaborating across internal teams locally to coordinate and align lab operations, quality, and utilization; maintaining and managing relationships with external vendors, local/state public health and safety organizations, and other health care providers; aligning with health care providers on community health concerns and referred testing; and evaluating alignment with local and national standards and regulations, and utilization of technology and initiatives.
• Ensures medical laboratory operations and improves processes by: ensuring efficient operations, quality, service, patient safety, member/customer satisfaction, and cost effectiveness through evaluation and standardization of technical and/or non-technical services and processes; overseeing innovative work plan processes to improve systems across the continuum of care; identifying new testing methodologies, processes, and technology that have the potential to improve service, quality, and/or efficiency; overseeing resolution of onsite facilities issues of varying complexity and developing long-term strategies for preventing such issues with internal and external vendors; supporting strategies with internal and external vendors; guiding and mentoring employees to cultivate teamwork and foster a progressive work environment; proactively monitoring personnel needs during periods of varying technical and/or non-technical work load; optimizing inventory and maintenance systems, ensuring efficient utilization of supplies inventory, and estimating usage and costs; and providing high level support for ongoing technical and/or non-technical project management, including local, regional, and national initiatives, status reports, and communication with key stakeholders.
• Manages service quality by: communicating applicable policies and procedures for audit and process improvement projects to teams; overseeing corrective actions, preventive actions, and process improvements based on internal and external quality audits of technical and/or non-technical processes; guiding and influencing plans for correcting deviations from expected quality control results; aligning teams on strategies used to ensure that tests are performed properly and results are verified before being shared; enacting procedures and protocols to ensure specimens are collected and processed according to established time and quality standards; driving the resolution of proficiency testing concerns; and leading the implementation of innovative strategies to resolve problems of varying complexity related to pre-analytical (collection, processing, etc.), analytical, or post-analytical testing, as applicable.