Vice President and Chief Patient Experience Officer

Cleveland Clinic is seeking a dynamic and experienced leader to serve as Vice President and Chief Patient Experience Officer. This is a key role in driving a positive care-seeker experience across the enterprise. 

As a member of the Clinical and Operational Improvement executive leadership team, the Vice President and Chief Patient Experience Officer is responsible for developing and executing the enterprise-wide vision and strategy to become the preeminent leader in Patient Experience (PE) and the most trusted healthcare system in the world. This leader provides strategic, operational and collaborative leadership to ensure all elements of our comprehensive enterprise strategy are optimally positioned to transform the patient experience and strengthen trust among patients and care-seekers globally. 

The Vice President and Chief Patient Experience Officer develops, defines and leads the patient experience vision, strategy, goals, processes and functions, including objectives and key results (OKRs). This leader partners with other key clinical and operational leaders to ensure clinical care, operational processes and digital and marketing assets are optimally positioned to support and enable a comprehensive and integrated patient and family experience that builds loyalty and fosters trust. This leader is responsible for defining and tracking system-level trust and experience metrics, aligned to enterprise brand, access and quality outcomes. 

The Vice President and Chief Patient Experience Officer leads the enterprise Patient Experience team, modeling collaboration and building trust with key stakeholders across all interdisciplinary healthcare roles to achieve highly reliable outcomes, foster trust and improve performance. Additionally, this leader proactively communicates internally and externally to educate staff and patients about the patient experience vision and strategy, tactics, metrics and performance.  

Responsibilities: 

• Responsible for developing and articulating a clear, compelling vision and strategy to transform the patient experience and foster trust across the consumer and patient journey for the Enterprise. 

• Responsible for implementing, managing and evaluating the CCHS Patient Experience strategy, ensuring enterprise alignment on key strategies, initiatives and processes to drive improvement and ensure we achieve our strategic goals. 

• Oversee PE operations, including team leadership, recruitment, performance management, caregiver experience, budgeting and resource allocation. 

• Identify, prioritize, and communicate patient, family member/caregiver and care-seeker preferences, needs, expectations, concerns and risks. Partner with clinical and nonclinical stakeholders to proactively address concerns and remediate as appropriate. 

• Guide and inform selection and use of technology to enhance patient, family member and care-seeker experience and foster trust. 

• Maintain high level of education and knowledge of the healthcare environment. Communicate activities and trends of regulatory agencies, improvement methodologies, tools and innovations related to patient and care-seeker preferences and experience. 

• Shape and inform the use of technology (including the electronic medical record (Epic, including MyChart), web-based tools, AI-capabilities, other digital assets and capabilities to shape patient and care-seeker expectations, enhance the patient experience and build trust. 

• Partner closely with Marketing and IT to ensure the brand, website and all marketing assets and digital tools and marketing effectively align customer expectations and brand to create a cohesive and integrated care-seeker and patient experience. 

• Partner closely with the Vice President, Access to ensure the patient and care-seeker experience is seamless, intuitive and aligned across all access points. This includes integration of scheduling workflows, care navigation tools, digital front door assets and referral processes to reduce friction and enhance trust across the entirety of patient journey. 

• Collaborate closely with Safety, Quality and Patient Experience (SQPE) and Access leadership and teams to ensure a unified, integrated approach to improving patient experience as part of the broader Safety, Quality and Patient Experience improvement strategy. 

• Oversee, guide and advise on touchpoints that shape how families, caregivers, care-seekers and communities experience and trust Cleveland Clinic.   

• Partner closely with the Caregiver Office and clinical/nonclinical leaders to ensure caregiver engagement and cultural alignment reinforce patient trust. 

• Ensure inclusion of patient voice in the development of the patient experience, marketing and digital strategies, technologies and communications. 

• Provide content expertise, while integrating data and learning from patient and consumer inputs and complaint systems to further efforts to optimize and transform the patient experience. 

• Build, develop and manage a high-performing enterprise Patient Experience and Trust team that spans markets and services, ensuring local care-seeker needs and preferences are met while aligning to enterprise strategy and objectives. 

• Collaborate effectively and foster effective partnerships with leaders across Clinical and Operational Improvement, markets, institutes and shared services. 

Minimum qualifications: 

• Master’s degree in healthcare or related field, or other advanced degree in clinical field (medicine, nursing or other clinical area) 

• Certified Patient Experience Professional (CPXP) or equivalent certification within one year of hire 

• A minimum of 15 years of related healthcare leadership – ideally with deep experience in healthcare, technology or consumer service industries 

• A minimum of five years of direct leadership experience 

• Must have proven track record of creating and operationalizing successful strategic patient/customer trust and experience strategies that drive stakeholder engagement and organizational objectives 

• Knowledge of regulatory landscape, data and analytics of patient/customer experience data and research, statistical and financial analysis and business plan development, including experience gathering, evaluating and sharing quantitative and qualitative voice of the customer data to inform a strategy 

• Knowledge of healthcare industry and patient/customer experience landscape, including challenges, regulatory environment, market dynamics and emerging trends 

• Demonstrated record of success leading strategy and managing change in large, complex organizations 

• Vision for a strategic, system-level and global patient trust and experience strategy, aligned to enterprise strategy 

• Excellent interpersonal skills that enable effective partnership, collaboration and change leadership across enterprise functions at the executive leader level, including clinical (nursing and provider) and operational leadership, strategy, digital and marketing leaders 

• Proven experience building and leading high-performance, multidisciplinary teams, including attracting and maintaining top-tier global talent 

• Ability to motivate a team and a large, matrixed organization through change and transformation 

• Demonstrated financial acumen, with ability to plan, create business plans and manage budgets 

• Operational discipline, analytic acumen, data-driven approach and demonstrated ability to drive measurable outcomes 

• Experience managing strategic relationships, partnership and contracts with vendors, consultants, agencies and organizational partners 

• Effective application and coaching of Lean/process improvement, structured problem solving, journey mapping, human-centered design and other improvement methodologies 

• Demonstrated success in leading culture, service, or brand transformation initiatives at scale while modeling Cleveland Clinic values 

Preferred qualifications: 

• Healthcare experience 

• Ability to collaborate with and influence C-suite leaders and caregivers at all levels