Vice President, Quality, Safety & Patient Experience

Beth Israel Lahey Health; Boston (MA); On-site; USD 320,000 - 375,000; Full time

Job summary

Beth Israel Lahey Health seeks a transformative leader to serve as Vice President of Quality, Safety & Patient Experience. You will design and oversee an integrated strategy across the system, driving improvements in quality, safety, equity, regulatory readiness, and patient/family experiences.

You will lead a multidisciplinary team, ensure accountability, and align enterprise priorities with hospital-level execution while fostering a culture of transparency and continuous improvement.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Nursing, Public Health, Health Administration required; Master’s degree preferred.
• Certified Professional in Healthcare Quality (CPHQ) or Lean Six Sigma or equivalent.
• Minimum of 10 years of progressive leadership experience in healthcare quality, patient safety, regulatory readiness, or performance improvement.
• Demonstrated experience in leading cross-functional teams and system-level change management.
• Prior experience leading Quality, Safety and/or Patient Experience in a complex, multi-hospital or academic health system.

Responsibilities

• Lead the development and execution of a unified quality, safety, and patient experience strategy across the system.
• Serve as a core member of the system’s leadership team, contributing to enterprise strategy, risk management, and care delivery redesign.
• Build partnerships across clinical, operational, and administrative domains to embed quality and safety into every aspect of the patient journey.
• Directly oversees the BILH Quality team and provides dotted line leadership to hospital and clinical unit quality teams.
• Oversee governance, performance monitoring, and reporting to align with enterprise priorities and national benchmarks.
• Translate strategy into action by developing frameworks for initiative deployment, outcome tracking, and local accountability.
• Champion a systemwide culture of safety, equity, and patient/family partnership; develop leadership competencies.

Skills

Leadership

Data-literate

Communication skills

Analytics

Education

Bachelor’s degree in Nursing, Public Health, Health Administration

Master’s degree preferred

CPHQ / Lean Six Sigma / equivalent

Tools

Lean Six Sigma

Job description

When you join the growing BILH team, you are not just taking a job, you are making a difference in people’s lives.

Job Description: The Vice President of Quality, Safety & Patient Experience serves as the executive leader responsible for designing, implementing, and overseeing an integrated strategy that advances the highest standards of clinical quality, safety, equity, regulatory readiness, and patient/family experience across the entire health system.

This role provides strategic direction and operational leadership to multiple departments, ensuring alignment between system-level goals and hospital/clinical unit-level execution. The VP fosters a culture of transparency, continuous improvement, and patient-centered care, while ensuring compliance with all regulatory and accreditation requirements.

The ideal candidate is a transformative, collaborative leader who can harmonize efforts across diverse hospitals and clinical units while driving measurable improvements in clinical outcomes, harm reduction, patient satisfaction, and health equity.

Key Responsibilities

• Executive Leadership & Strategy: Lead the development and execution of a unified quality, safety, and patient experience strategy across the system.
• Serve as a core member of the system’s leadership team, contributing to enterprise strategy, risk management, and care delivery redesign.
• Build partnerships across clinical, operational, and administrative domains to embed quality and safety into every aspect of the patient journey.
• Departmental Oversight: Directly oversees the BILH Quality team. Provides dotted line leadership to the hospital and clinical unit quality teams. Ensure the department functions with a clear mission, high performance standards, appropriate staffing, and seamless integration across the continuum of care.
• Governance & Performance Monitoring: Lead system quality governance councils, performance review processes, and board-level reporting. Monitor performance against internal goals and national benchmarks (e.g., CMS Star Ratings, Leapfrog, Joint Commission, HCAHPS, mortality, readmissions, CLABSI, CAUTI, etc.). Oversee the development and sustainment of enterprise dashboards, strategic scorecards, and escalation protocols for underperformance.
• Operational Integration & Accountability: Ensure consistency in execution of quality programs at the hospital level through effective support of local Quality teams. Translate strategy into action by developing frameworks for initiative deployment, outcome tracking, and local accountability. Align hospital quality committees, performance improvement efforts, and site-based audits with enterprise priorities. Partner with nursing, medical staff, infection prevention, risk management, and operations to improve quality across departments.
• Workforce & Culture Development: Champion a systemwide culture of safety, equity, and patient/family partnership. Models our WE CARE values and fosters our values with the team. Partner with Talent Development to embed quality-related competencies into leadership development and performance evaluations. Effectively champions and develops Quality team members across the system.
• Regulatory & Risk Readiness: Oversee the enterprise approach to survey preparedness, including readiness audits, corrective action plans, and regulatory compliance infrastructure. Collaborate with legal, compliance, and patient safety leaders on incident management, disclosure, and risk mitigation.
• Patient Experience & Equity Leadership: Lead the integration of voice-of-the-patient mechanisms, service recovery practices, and cultural competence strategies into all care settings. Support initiatives to identify and close gaps in care quality and experience for underserved populations.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Nursing, Public Health, Health Administration, or a related clinical or quality discipline required. Masters preferred.
• Certified Professional in Healthcare Quality (CPHQ), Lean Six Sigma, or equivalent.
• Minimum of 10 years of progressive leadership experience in healthcare quality, patient safety, regulatory readiness, or performance improvement.
• Demonstrated experience in leading cross-functional teams and system-level change management.
• Prior experience leading Quality, Safety and/or Patient Experience in a complex, multi-hospital or academic health system.

Knowledge, Skills, & Abilities

• Deep understanding of quality improvement science, safety culture, and patient engagement principles.
• Strong familiarity with regulatory requirements and external performance programs (e.g., CMS, TJC, AHRQ, Leapfrog).
• Exceptional leadership, interpersonal, and communication skills.
• Data-literate, outcomes-oriented, and skilled in using analytics to drive decision-making.
• Ability to lead through influence, collaboration, and coalition-building in a matrixed organization.

Pay Range: $320,000.00 USD - $375,000.00 USD

The pay range listed for this position is the annual base salary range the organization reasonably and in good faith expects to pay for this position at this time. In addition to base compensation, this position may be eligible for additional compensation, which may include performance-based incentive bonuses.

As a health care organization, we have a responsibility to do everything in our power to care for and protect our patients, our colleagues and our communities. Beth Israel Lahey Health requires that all staff be vaccinated against influenza (flu) as a condition of employment.

More than 35,000 people working together. Nurses, doctors, technicians, therapists, researchers, teachers and more, making a difference in patients' lives. Your skill and compassion can make us even stronger.

Equal Opportunity Employer/Veterans/Disabled