Senior Manager, Quality and Safety — Cardiac PET/CT

CVAUSA; Pine Bluff (AR); On-site; USD 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Job summary

CVAUSA is seeking a Senior Manager of Quality and Safety for Cardiac PET to lead the standardization and continuous improvement of cardiac PET/CT imaging across the network. This hands-on role requires years in real‑world cardiac PET programs, driving quality, safety, and diagnostic accuracy at scale.

You will own the quality framework, develop protocols, and collaborate with practices to raise imaging quality and patient safety, with up to 50% travel and a national remote work option.

Qualifications

• 5–10+ years managing the quality of cardiac imaging services, with 5+ years in cardiac PET quality leadership or nuclear cardiology/SPECT quality leadership.
• Deep understanding of PET/CT accreditation quality criteria and how to operationalize them.
• Experience developing and managing quality improvement programs for cardiac PET, including routine peer review and PET/CT-to-angiography correlation.
• Experience defining and administering quality training and competency requirements for clinicians.
• Willingness and ability to travel up to 50%.

Responsibilities

• Refine, implement, and improve CVAUSA’s quality and safety program for cardiac PET/CT across the network.
• Establish and maintain quality metrics, protocols, and SOPs for acquisition, protocols, tracer handling, quantification, and interpretation.
• Build dashboards and reporting to make imaging quality and outcomes visible at network and site levels.
• Lead accreditation support with IAC/ACR requirements and ensure criteria are met.
• Design and run peer review / over-read programs for interpreting physicians.
• Travel to affiliated practices to assess PET/CT programs end to end and drive remediation.
• Apply PDSA, root-cause analysis, and SPC to reduce variation and improve diagnostic accuracy and safety.

Skills

Quality program leadership

PET/CT quality awareness

QI methods (PDSA, SPC)

Data dashboards

Travel up to 50%

Job description

THE COMPANY

At Cardiovascular Associates of America (CVAUSA), we believe that the total cost of cardiovascular care is too high and the optimal way to identify and remove the avoidable costs in cardiovascular care delivery is by equipping and empowering cardiovascular physicians with new care models and new financial incentives via risk-based contracts.

Position Summary

CVAUSA is seeking a Senior Manager of Quality and Safety for Cardiac PET to lead the standardization and continuous improvement of cardiac PET/CT imaging across our network of community cardiology practices. This person will own the quality framework for one of the fastest-growing and most technically demanding imaging modalities in cardiovascular care — setting the standards, building the improvement programs, and working directly with practices to raise the floor and the ceiling on imaging quality, patient safety, and diagnostic accuracy. This is a hands-on role for someone who has spent years inside real-world cardiac PET programs, knows exactly where quality tends to break down in community practice, and is energized by the work of closing those gaps at scale.

Key Responsibilities

Quality Program Development & Management

• Refine, implement, and iteratively improve upon CVAUSA’s initial quality and safety program for cardiac PET/CT across CVAUSA’s practice network.
• Establish and maintain quality metrics, protocols, and standard operating procedures spanning acquisition, stress protocols, tracer handling, quantification (myocardial blood flow / flow reserve), and interpretation.
• Build dashboards and reporting that make imaging quality and outcomes visible and actionable at both the network and individual-site level.

Accreditation

• Serve as the network\'s subject-matter expert on PET/CT accreditation requirements (e.g., IAC, ACR) and ensure practices meet or exceed accreditation quality criteria.
• Support practices as needed through initial accreditation and re-accreditation as needed, including documentation, QC records, and required competencies.
• Partner with the Medical Director and Radiation Safety Officer, who retain final sign-off on all clinical protocol specifics (dosing, contraindications, supervision levels) driven through this role.

Peer Review & Clinical Validation

• Establish and run routine peer review / over-read programs for interpreting physicians, with structured feedback and improvement pathways.
• Design and operationalize systematic comparisons of PET/CT findings against invasive coronary angiography, using discordance analysis to identify interpretation, protocol, and quantification issues and drive corrective action.
• Design analyses that leverage billing and electronic health record data to understand patterns of care quality and identify variations in utilization and clinical outcomes across practices and patient populations.

Training & Competency

• Implement, refine, and iteratively improve upon existing quality-focused training and competency requirements for interpreting clinicians.
• Develop training content to help standardize clinician continuing education for PET/CT.

Site Assessment & Standardization

• Travel to affiliated practices to assess PET/CT programs end to end — equipment and QC, protocols, staff competency, workflow, and image quality.
• Identify site-specific and network-wide sources of variation and poor-quality imaging (e.g., PET/CT misregistration and attenuation-correction artifacts, patient motion, stress protocol inconsistency, generator/tracer handling, calibration and QC gaps, reader variability) and lead remediation.

Performance Monitoring & Continuous Improvement

• Apply core quality-improvement methodology (e.g., PDSA cycles, root-cause analysis, statistical process control) to reduce variation and improve diagnostic accuracy and safety.
• Set benchmarks, track performance over time, and partner with practice leadership to sustain gains.

Required Qualifications

• 5–10+ years managing the quality of cardiac imaging services, including 5+ years specifically working with cardiac PET (or 5+ years in nuclear cardiology/SPECT quality leadership with demonstrated ability to ramp on PET-specific quality control).
• Deep, demonstrated understanding of PET/CT accreditation quality criteria and quality best practices (beyond required accreditation criteria) and how to operationalize them in practice.
• Proven experience developing and managing quality improvement programs for cardiac PET, including routine peer review and PET/CT-to-coronary-angiography correlation programs.
• Experience defining and administering quality training and competency requirements for clinicians.
• Strong, practical familiarity with what it takes to run a high-quality cardiac PET/CT program in a community practice setting, and a clear-eyed understanding of the common sources and drivers of care variation and poor-quality imaging.
• 2+ years driving quality improvement across imaging service lines (including cardiac PET), with working fluency in core QI principles and a genuine passion for the work.
• Willingness and ability to travel up to 50%.

Preferred Qualifications

• Based in the Southeast US or Florida.
• Prior experience standardizing quality across a multi-site network or MSO environment.

Why Join Cardiovascular Associates of America

At CVAUSA, you’ll help improve and measure quality and advance scientific discovery at a national scale, and as part of the nation’s largest network of cardiovascular care professionals. You’ll have an opportunity to work closely with and learn from physician, quality, and imaging leaders. Your work will be foundational for our efforts to improve patient care and save lives. You’ll join a mission-focused organization dedicated to excellence in cardiovascular care and clinical research.

Location: Remote, with a strong preference for candidates based in the Southeast US or Florida (proximity to the majority of CVAUSA\'s affiliated practices)

Travel: Up to 50%, primarily to visit affiliated practices and evaluate PET/CT programs on site