Leadership
UCHealth Medical Director, DocLine & Capacity Management
UCHealth Medical Group
, Colorado
ID: 1650
Description:
Provides enterprise clinical leadership for patient transfer operations across a 15-hospital system-ensuring safe, timely, and clinically appropriate access while optimizing system capacity and regional patient flow and referral growth.
This role serves as the physician leader for DocLine transfer operations and functions in a dyad partnership with DocLine leadership, with matrixed alignment to system and regional capacity management leaders.
Key Responsibilities:
- Clinical Leadership: Align transfer decisions with system capacity strategy; serve as primary clinical liaison across hospitals and referring providers.
- Transfer Optimization: Standardize transfer pathways, escalation workflows, resolve complex cases, and ensure accountability in transfer acceptance/denials.
- Access & Throughput: Partner with capacity, patient flow, and operational leaders to match transfer demand with system resources and prioritize high-acuity, time-sensitive care.
- Performance & Analytics: Use transfer data to identify and reduce delays, bottlenecks, variation, declined transfer trends and opportunities for improvement to inform strategic capacity planning.
- System Integration: Collaborate across CMOs, ACMOs, operational leaders, service lines, and external partners to strengthen referral networks, coordinated patient flow, and shared accountability.
Core Functions:
- Serve as the physician clinical leader for DocLine transfer operations, ensuring transfer decisions reflect best clinical practices and align with system capacity strategy
- Provide DocLine physician leadership and representation across all regional DocLine Steering Committees
- Oversee development, implementation, and maintenance of standardized clinical transfer pathways, specialty-specific decision algorithms, and escalation workflows
- Serve as the clinical escalation point for complex transfers, disagreements between sending and receiving teams, specialty service conflicts, or cases with ambiguous clinical needs
- Strengthen accountability for declined transfers by ensuring cases are reviewed for clinical appropriateness, safety, and opportunities for process improvement
- Partner with system and regional patient flow leaders to align transfer demand with system capacity, optimizing access to tertiary and quaternary services
- Define policies regarding interfacility transfers during periods of saturation, including prioritization of high-acuity cases, emergency department boarders, and time-sensitive specialty transfers.
- Lead interdisciplinary improvement work to reduce transfer delays, simplify clinical workflows, improve communication, and enhance the experience of both referring and receiving providers.
- Partner with analytics teams to design, refine, and operationalize Docline transfer center dashboards, using data to identify variation, remove bottlenecks, and guide operational change
- Build durable partnerships across hospitals, service lines, and administrative teams to ensure alignment, and shared ownership of transfer operations
- Support relationships with community hospitals, rural partners, emergency medical services, and regional organizations to facilitate safe, timely, and clinically appropriate transfers into the system
Impact:
Advances system access, capacity optimization, and regional referral growth by improving timely access to tertiary and quaternary services, reducing avoidable transfer delays, strengthening provider experience, and supporting clinically appropriate patient placement.
Reporting Relationships: This position will report to the ACMO for DocLine.
Qualifications:
- MD or DO eligible for licensure in Colorado.
- Board certification in primary specialty by ABMS (MD and DO)
- Demonstrated experience in leading high-performing, cross-functional teams in hospital operations, transfer center operations, emergency medicine, hospital medicine, critical care, trauma, specialty access, capacity management, or related clinical operations
- Demonstrated ability to lead across a matrixed health system
- Demonstrates high integrity, sound clinical judgment, fortitude, creativity, and a positive, constructive approach to problem solving
- Deep understanding of analytics and informatics along with problem-solving capabilities
- High level of demonstrated expertise in change management.
- Ability to build credibility with physicians, nurses, operational leaders, referring clinicians, and executive stakeholders.
- Strong communication skills, including the ability to adjudicate conflict, clarity expectations, and drive accountability across multiple hospitals and service lines.
Maintains matrixed partnerships with:
- System and regional CMOs and ACMOs
- Hospital Presidents and operational executives, as needed
- Emergency Medicine leadership
- Hospital Medicine leadership
- Trauma, critical care, surgical, procedural, and specialty service leaders
- Virtual Health Center leadership
- Revenue Cycle leadership
- Physician Relations
- External referring facilities and clinicians
Compensation: 0.2 FTE