Chief Quality Officer

About the role

The Chief Quality Officer (CQO) provides executive leadership and strategic direction for quality, patient safety, clinical effectiveness, and performance improvement across the organization. The CQO partners closely with executive, physician, nursing, and operational leaders to advance a culture of safety, accountability, high reliability, and continuous improvement. This role is responsible for developing and executing an enterprise-wide quality strategy that improves clinical outcomes, patient experience, regulatory performance, and overall organizational effectiveness. The CQO serves as a key advisor to executive leadership and provides oversight of quality and safety programs, performance metrics, accreditation readiness, and improvement initiatives.

Responsibilities

• Develop and lead the organization's enterprise-wide quality and patient safety strategy in alignment with organizational goals, priorities, and performance expectations.
• Establish measurable quality objectives, performance metrics, and accountability structures to improve clinical outcomes, patient experience, reliability, and organizational effectiveness.
• Provide executive oversight for patient safety programs, high-reliability initiatives, serious safety event review, root cause analysis, and sustainable corrective action planning.
• Lead multidisciplinary performance improvement initiatives focused on clinical effectiveness, evidence-based practice, care variation reduction, efficiency, and patient-centered outcomes.
• Use quality data, internal and external benchmarks, and performance trends to identify gaps, set priorities, monitor progress, and drive measurable improvement.
• Provide executive leadership for accreditation, regulatory readiness, quality-related compliance, survey preparedness, deficiency resolution, and ongoing monitoring of regulatory requirements.
• Establish and maintain effective quality and safety reporting processes for executive leadership, governing boards, committees, and operational stakeholders.
• Build strong partnerships with physicians, nursing leaders, advanced practice providers, executives, and operational leaders to advance quality, safety, and clinical performance priorities.
• Promote a culture of safety, transparency, continuous improvement, learning, proactive risk identification, and shared accountability across the organization.
• Lead, develop, and support quality, patient safety, regulatory, and performance improvement teams, including setting expectations, building capability, and retaining high-performing team members.

Education

• Associate's Degree in Nursing Required
• Bachelor's Degree in healthcare administration, business administration, nursing, public health, or a related field Required
• Master's Degree in healthcare administration, business administration, nursing, public health, or a related field Preferred

Experience

• Ten (10) years of significant progressive leadership experience in healthcare quality, patient safety, clinical operations, or performance improvement Required
• Experience leading quality and safety initiatives within a complex healthcare organization Required
• Experience using quality and clinical data to drive measurable performance improvement Required

Skills

• Strategic planning, critical thinking, and data-driven decision-making skills.
• Strong knowledge of healthcare quality, patient safety, regulatory, and accreditation requirements.
• Ability to lead quality improvement, continuous improvement, and performance improvement processes.
• Advanced verbal, written, presentation, persuasion, and executive communication skills.
• Demonstrated ability to build relationships, negotiate effectively, and influence physicians, executives, and operational leaders.
• Strong team-building, leadership, collaboration, and change management skills in a matrixed organization.
• Healthcare financial, budgetary, and resource management knowledge.
• Strong listening, problem-solving, diplomacy, and conflict-resolution skills.

Licenses and Certifications

• Registered Nurse - South Carolina Department of Labor, Licensing and Regulation Required

Work Shift

Day - 8 hour shift (United States of America)