Patient Safety Specialist (83162)

Centurion is proud to be a leading provider of comprehensive healthcare services to correctional facilities, state hospitals, and community mental health centers nationwide.

Position Overview

This position reports to the Chief Nursing Officer (CNO) or designee. In collaboration with the CNO, ACNO, Clinical Operations, Quality Improvement, and program leadership, the Patient Safety Specialist supports the development, implementation, evaluation, and sustainment of patient safety programs across correctional healthcare programs. This role promotes a culture of safety, Just Culture, high reliability, and continuous improvement through event review, trend analysis, root cause/apparent cause analysis, safety education, performance monitoring, and action plan follow-up.

The Patient Safety Specialist assists programs in identifying patient safety risks, reducing preventable harm, improving clinical processes, and supporting compliance with contract requirements, Centurion standards, and applicable accreditation and regulatory expectations.

Essential Duties/Responsibilities

• Works in collaboration with the CNO, CMO, quality/risk leadership, and clinical operations to support patient safety priorities, program goals, and consistent implementation of safety practices throughout Centurion programs.
• Collaborates with regional and site nursing leadership to identify patient safety risks, evaluate trends, and support mitigation strategies within correctional healthcare settings.
• Interacts proactively with operators, directors, leaders, physicians, nurses, custody partners and other members of the health care delivery team to achieve desired outcomes.
• Supports positive client relationships throughout the organization.
• Reviews patient safety events, near misses, grievances, audits, sentinel/serious events, and other data sources to identify patterns, contributing factors, and opportunities for improvement.
• Supports or facilitates root cause analysis, apparent cause analysis, common cause analysis, and clinical case review processes, including development and follow-up of corrective action plans.
• Promotes a Just Culture approach to event review, helping teams distinguish human error, at-risk behavior, reckless behavior, system vulnerabilities, and opportunities for learning.
• Partners with site teams to implement patient safety initiatives related to medication safety, access to care, clinical communication, emergency response, infection prevention, suicide prevention, falls, infirmary care, chronic care, and other high-risk correctional healthcare processes.
• Develops, maintains, and analyzes patient safety metrics, dashboards, reports, and performance trends to inform leadership decision-making and program-level improvement plans.
• Provides coaching, mentoring, and hands-on support to clinical leaders and frontline staff in patient safety practices, event reporting, data interpretation, and improvement methodology.
• Collaborates with Human Resources Learning and Development team to identify and provide patient safety education, training, and communication as indicated/requested.
• Assists with the development/review of patient safety content for policies, procedures, clinical tools, training modules, communications, and proposal development, as indicated.
• Assists/provides input specific to contract monitoring tools to verify consistency and continuity with Centurion/MHM policy/standards of practice as well as national standards (NCCHC, ACA).
• Works collaboratively with other Clinical Operations areas, including nursing, medical, behavioral health, quality, compliance, risk, infection prevention, pharmacy, and learning and development.
• Ensures CNO, CMO, and appropriate clinical operations leaders are apprised of patient safety strengths, risks, trends, and barriers within specific contracts.
• Participates as needed in committees, workgroups, meetings, and educational activities related to quality, risk, safety, clinical operations, accreditation readiness, and patient care improvement.
• Represents Centurion/MHM at conferences, meetings, and client-facing opportunities as requested.
• Other duties as assigned.
• Bachelor of Science in Nursing, Healthcare Administration, Public Health, or related field required.
• Master degree in Nursing, Healthcare Administration, Public Health, or related field preferred.
• Active Registered Nurse license preferred when nursing degree is held; clinical licensure or certification in a related healthcare discipline may be considered based on role scope and contract needs.
• Minimum of 3 years of clinical, quality, risk, patient safety, or healthcare operations experience required.
• Experience in correctional healthcare, behavioral health, emergency care, ambulatory care, public health, or other complex healthcare environments preferred.
• Experience with event reporting systems, patient safety investigations, root cause analysis, apparent cause analysis, failure mode and effects analysis, or other safety science methods preferred.
• Knowledge of patient safety science, Just Culture, high reliability principles, performance improvement, quality metrics, and regulatory/accreditation standards preferred.
• Certification such as Certified Professional in Patient Safety (CPPS), Certified Professional in Healthcare Quality (CPHQ), Lean, Six Sigma, or correctional healthcare certification preferred.
• Proven success with the ability to interact well with physicians and varied levels of management, clinical and administrative staff in a correctional environment.
• Ability to work with site, county and state correctional administrative staff and/or clinical/administrative contract liaisons.
• Ability to work with multi-state contracts and travel nationwide.
• Able to effectively use Microsoft Office, data reporting tools, electronic health records, and event reporting or risk management systems.
• Must be able to pass background investigation and obtain agency security clearance where applicable.
• Completes initial and annual tuberculin screening and tuberculosis skin testing when applicable.
• Maintains active CPR certification.
• Ability to travel 50% or more nationally.