Senior Manager Clinical Nutrition and Patient Food Services

Job Summary:

In addition to the responsibilities listed below, this senior manager position is also responsible for planning, organizing, and managing the provision of high-quality, cost-effective in-patient and out-patient clinical nutritional services and feeding operations that meet or exceed regulatory and budget requirements. This includes the provision of nutritional services including professional services, nutrition care services, and in- and out-patient feeding and computer nutrition programs. This also includes managing department operations, including but not limited to the planning and development of departmental operating and capital budgets; managing payroll and non-payroll expenditures; and partnering with the management team to develop short- and long-term departmental goals and objectives in alignment with service area medical center strategic plans.

This position acts as a key partner and liaison with professional staff (e.g., physicians, nurse managers, pharmacists, and other Kaiser staff) to ensure open communications regarding patient food services and nutritional care services. This role also leverages partnerships with the other service area leadership to plan, integrate, and coordinate provision of products and services across customer groups. This includes managing quality assurance programs; developing, implementing, and maintaining policies and procedures for area of responsibility; and ensuring quality care of members, patients, and staff through continuous monitoring and process improvement initiatives.

Essential Responsibilities:

• Creates and advocates for developmental opportunities for others; builds collaborative, cross-functional relationships. Solicits and acts on performance feedback; works with leaders and employees to set goals and provide open feedback and coaching to drive performance improvement. Pursues professional growth; hires, trains, and develops talent for growth opportunities; strategically evaluates talent for succession planning; sets performance management guidelines and expectations across teams / units. Oversees implementation, adapts, and stays up to date with organizational change, challenges, feedback, best practices, processes, and industry trends; shares best practices within and across teams. Fosters open dialogue amongst team members, engages, motivates, and promotes collaboration within and across teams; motivates teams to meet business objectives. Delegates tasks and decisions as appropriate; provides appropriate support, guidance and scope; encourages development and consideration of options in decision making; fosters access to stakeholders.
• Manages designated units or teams by translating business plans into tactical action items; oversees the completion of work assignments and identifies opportunities for improvement; ensures all policies and procedures are followed; partners with key stakeholders and business leaders to ensure products and/or services meet requirements and expectations while aligning with departmental strategies. Aligns team efforts; builds accountability for and measuring progress in achieving results; assumes responsibility for decision making; fosters direct reports to resolve escalated issues as appropriate. Communicates goals and objectives; incorporates resources, costs, and forecasts into team and unit plans; ensures matrixed resources are fulfilling service or performance requirements across reporting lines. Removes obstacles that impact performance; identifies and addresses improvement opportunities; guides performance and develops contingency plans accordingly; influences teams and units to operate in alignment with operational and business objectives.
• Oversees the sanitation and maintenance of food services work areas and equipment by monitoring cleaning and sanitizing logs and updating company standards to meet regulatory and compliance guidelines, and reviewing equipment replacement requests and other expenditures to ensure budget guidelines are maintained.
• Oversees vendor contract management by planning regular reviews of vendors to ensure vendor contracts are in place; identifying strategic opportunities to leverage relationships with vendors to ensure they are providing services consistent with vendor agreements or regulatory compliance standards; and helping leadership identify vendor metrics to ensure service delivery is compliant, safe, sanitary, in support of patient patient satisfaction.
• Oversees the procurement, storage, and distribution of food by ensuring teams receive needed inventory and resolving related issues, managing inventory usage and directing team to adhere to established utilization levels, setting procurement budgets and ensuring teams remain within budget; setting and managing expectations across teams for maintaining stock levels at food stations and in work areas, updating inventory with out-of-stock items; and updating and/or revising procedures for labeling and storage of perishable items to align with company standards, regulatory requirements, and procurement budgets.
• Oversees the food recall by managing and revising protocols to return of food that has been recalled or is at risk of contamination; and strategizing communication plans to patients and staff about ongoing updates or actions being taken to resolve food recall issues.
• Oversees the preparation and production of meal plans by providing oversight and direction for the preparation and planning of menu/items, ensuring teams are processing meals as expected according to a variety of recipes and/or production schedules, and reviewing regulatory and budget adherence for any changes needed; planning strategies to ensure food is prepared in a safe manner per food preparation standards and is safe for patients; planning changes to protocols used by team members to assemble patient meal trays and cafeteria and/or catering services, and ensuring resources are in place so that team members can cater food items according to scheduled mealtimes.
• Manages emergency planning by strategizing and testing workplans that ensure food supply, delivery, and services are efficiently maintained during times of crisis or emergency.
• Oversees the customer and patient experience by reviewing customer/patient requests and using strategic thinking to develop innovative solutions in order to increase customer/patient satisfaction and reduce systematic service recovery issues; forecasting internal and external needs and anticipating work of unit-based teams to support food service and delivery operations that help the business unit deliver quality care; analyzing patterns across patient responses to quality control survey questions, overseeing the submission of relevant quality control reporting, integrating knowledge of metrics used to assess quality control and quality performance across departments to identify systematic issues; planning strategic efforts to reduce critical control points to acceptable levels and improve the care experience; and planning quality control initiatives across teams monitoring and reviewing the resolution of complex customer and patient concerns.