Director of Nursing, Hospice

Key Responsibilities

• Provides senior clinical oversight from referral through discharge and ensures services align with the hospice plan of care, physician orders, patient and family goals, regulatory requirements, and agency standards.
• Leads Clinical Managers and assigned teams in daily operations, staffing priorities, patient care concerns, documentation quality, performance expectations, and operational execution.
• Oversees assigned clinical functions, including admissions, after-hours, workflow nursing, centralized support, community care, or General Inpatient Hospice care.
• Supports complex clinical situations, urgent patient needs, escalations, patient/family or facility concerns, and risk mitigation.
• Organizes resources based on census, acuity, geography, level of care, admissions volume, and patient need, and provides Clinical Manager or Executive Director backup support as needed.

Care Delivery, Access & Continuity

• Ensures timely, consistent, high-quality hospice care across assigned services and care settings.
• Maintains survey readiness and compliance with hospice Conditions of Participation, agency policy, professional standards, eligibility requirements, recertification expectations, and level-of-care documentation.
• Reviews incidents, complaints, adverse events, clinical concerns, audits, reports, and data trends to identify risk areas, workflow barriers, staff education needs, and improvement opportunities.
• Supports effective handoffs between intake, admissions, after-hours, Clinical Managers, field teams, GIP teams, and Care Integration to promote continuity and reduce gaps in care.
• Partners with Clinical Managers to improve team communication, caseload management, productivity, and responsiveness to changing patient needs.

Quality, Compliance & Performance Improvement

• Ensures clinical documentation and charting practices meet agency, Medicare, federal, state, accreditation, and payor requirements.
• Reviews incidents, complaints, adverse events, clinical concerns, audits, reports, and data trends to identify risk areas, workflow barriers, staff education needs, and improvement opportunities.
• Supports corrective action planning, staff education, workflow improvement, and follow-up when gaps are identified.
• Supports agency performance related to visit utilization, symptom management, GIP appropriateness, timely admissions, CAHPS, complaint resolution, patient/family satisfaction, and clinical quality initiatives.

Financial & Operational Stewardship

• Supports staffing plans aligned with census, acuity, geography, level of care, admissions volume, after-hours needs, patient complexity, and program growth.
• Maintains survey readiness and compliance with hospice Conditions of Participation, agency policy, professional standards, eligibility requirements, recertification expectations, and level-of-care documentation.
• Monitors productivity, labor performance, overtime, scheduling effectiveness, staffing efficiency, clinical resource utilization, and operational barriers.
• Supports direct cost control through appropriate staffing, supply awareness, medication stewardship, DME coordination, and efficient clinical workflows.
• Participates in budget planning, workforce planning, operational forecasting, and census growth readiness as assigned.

Management Responsibilities

• Supervises Clinical Managers, assigned clinical staff, and support team members with clear expectations, consistent follow-up, and accountability.
• Coaches leaders and staff in clinical judgment, communication, staffing management, productivity oversight, documentation review, team performance, conflict resolution, and escalation management.
• Supports interviewing, onboarding, training, mentoring, retention, performance evaluation, corrective action, and leadership development.
• Buils leadership depth by developing current and emerging clinical leaders.
• Partners with the Executive Director and Human Resources to resolve staff issues and support employee engagement, satisfaction, accountability, and retention.