Director, Laboratory Operations Management

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; directing 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 directing quality assurance, safety, compliance, regulatory, and accreditation standards and activities.

Essential Responsibilities:

• Prepares individuals for growth opportunities and advancement; builds internal collaborative networks for self and others. Solicits and acts on performance feedback; drives collaboration to set goals and provide open feedback and coaching to foster performance improvement. Demonstrates continuous learning; oversees the recruitment, selection, and development of talent; ensures performance management guidelines and expectations to achieve business needs. Stays up to date with organizational best practices, processes, benchmarks, and industry trends; shares best practices within and across teams. Motivates and empowers teams; maintains a highly skilled and engaged workforce by aligning resource plans with business objectives. Provides guidance when difficult decisions need to be made; creates opportunities for expanded scope of decision making and impact.
• Oversees the operation of multiple units within a department by identifying member and operational needs; ensures the management of work assignment completion; translates business strategy into actionable business requirements; ensures products and/or services meet member requirements and expectations while aligning with organizational strategies. Gains cross-functional support for business plans and priorities; assumes responsibility for decision making; sets standards, measures progress, and fosters resolution of escalated issues. Communicates goals and objectives; analyzes resources, costs, and forecasts and incorporates them into business plans; prioritizes and distributes resources. Removes obstacles that impact performance; guides performance and develops contingency plans accordingly; ensures teams accomplish business objectives.
• Maintains testing and training standards by: promoting the departments strategic initiatives and how it can be advanced through the development and implementation of technical and/or non-technical training materials while also establishing standards for training and/or training resources; defining the competency standards required of relevant personnel; and scoping current and future training needs, strategizing how to address needs through regular, in-service, and competency training programs, and completing own training.
• Maintains compliance and accreditation by: defining policies and work instructions, ensuring they are in alignment with applicable regulations, license requirements, accreditation standards, and inspection checklists pertaining to laboratories and facilities where testing is performed; overseeing 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; ensuring timely renewal of all applicable licenses; and communicating the need for technical and/or non-technical documentation updates across teams.
• Serves as a link between medical laboratory services and other services by: influencing changes to current practices in response to regulatory/accreditation changes and issues, inspection citations, current events, and trends relevant to services, quality, and training; advising cross-functional teams to proactively evaluate and improve technical and/or non-technical quality management systems; networking and collaborating across leadership teams locally and nationally to coordinate and align lab operations, quality, and utilization; initiating and managing strategic relationships with external vendors, local/state/national public health and safety organizations, and other health care providers; providing expert advice to align with health care providers on community health concerns and referred testing; and setting expectations for alignment with local and national standards and regulations, and utilization of technology and initiatives.
• Ensures medical laboratory operations and improves processes by: developing strategies and defining 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; developing and championing innovative work plan processes to improve systems across the continuum of care and overseeing process deployment; introducing and advocating for new testing methodologies, processes, and technology that have the potential to improve service, quality, and/or efficiency; strategizing resolution of onsite facilities issues of varying complexity and establishing strategies for resolving such issues with internal and external vendors; developing strategies with internal and external vendors; coordinating organizational efforts to cultivate teamwork and promote a progressive work environment; forecasting future personnel needs during periods of varying technical and/or non-technical work load; establishing inventory and maintenance systems, ensuring the utilization of supplies inventory, and estimating short-term and long-term usage and costs; and initiating approaches for ongoing technical and/or non-technical project management, including local, regional, and national initiatives, status reports, monitoring of timeline progress, and communication with key stakeholders.
• Manages service quality by: championing applicable policies and procedures for audit and process improvement projects; approving corrective actions, preventive actions, and process improvements based on internal and external quality audits of technical and/or non-technical processes; recommending innovative plans for correcting deviations from expected quality control results; initiating strategies for ensuring that tests are performed properly and results are verified before being shared; establishing procedures and protocols to ensure specimens are collected and processed according to established time and quality standards; advising on the resolution of proficiency testing concerns; and developing strategies to resolve problems of varying complexity related to pre-analytical (collection, processing, etc.), analytical, or post-analytical testing, as applicable.