Senior Director of Nursing, Operations

About the role

The Senior Director of Nursing Operations provides enterprise-wide strategic and operational leadership for patient flow, throughput optimization, and internal logistics across the organization. This role is accountable for safe, reliable, equitable, patient-centered movement of patients across the continuum of care from admission and transfer through discharge—and for ensuring the right patient is in the right bed at the right level of care at the right time. The Senior Director oversees patient flow and capacity management, discharge planning and care progression, float pool operations, lift/transport services, internal logistics, and transfer center operations. In close partnership with nursing, medical staff, Transfer Center, House Supervisors, Care Management, Bed Placement, Environmental Services, Patient Transport, and ancillary leaders, this role establishes a daily management system that includes capacity huddles, tiered escalation, standardized handoffs, and performance review grounded in High Reliability Organization (HRO) principles. This leader plays a critical role in advancing ANMC’s strategic priorities related to throughput optimization, workforce stabilization, patient-centered care delivery, and reliable access for urban, rural, and frontier communities across Alaska.

Responsibilities

• Assists the ACNO/CNO in strategic planning, resource allocation, policy development, and operational decision‑making to advance nursing priorities, quality outcomes, and service line performance.
• Participates in emergency management, incident command, surge response, and business continuity planning as assigned to support organizational readiness and continuity of operations during urgent or evolving events.
• Supports academic partnerships, clinical education, professional development, and nursing research or quality dissemination activities that strengthen recruitment, retention, practice advancement, and organizational learning.
• Fosters a just culture and psychologically safe work environment by supporting leader visibility, structured communication, staff well‑being, resilience strategies, learning from events, and open reporting of risks, near misses, and improvement opportunities.
• Promotes a professional practice environment grounded in shared governance, evidence‑based practice, ethical nursing standards, and leadership development, and supports nursing excellence through specialty certification, succession planning, and workforce capability building.
• Champions an exceptional patient and family experience by partnering with leaders and teams to strengthen communication, responsiveness, service recovery, and culturally respectful, patient‑centered care.
• Leads enterprise‑wide patient flow, throughput, and internal logistics across admissions, discharges, transfers, bed management, the transfer center, transport coordination, and throughput command infrastructure to ensure timely, safe, equitable, and efficient care delivery.
• Leads initiatives to remove barriers to patient flow by designing and standardizing workflows, daily bed meetings, capacity huddles, escalation pathways, surge planning, transfer center procedures, tiered decision‑making, and handoffs; and serves as a key liaison among departments, clinical leaders, and providers to strengthen multidisciplinary collaboration, accountability, and real‑time situational awareness.
• Partners with Care Management, Social Work, and clinical teams to streamline discharge planning, mitigate barriers to discharge, coordinate post‑acute services, and implement standardized care progression models and accountability frameworks.
• Oversees centralized float pool operations, including staffing models, deployment, and competency standards; optimizes workforce utilization to improve flexibility, reduce premium labor, improve coverage reliability, and align staffing resources with patient demand and acuity across inpatient and procedural areas.
• Improves turnaround times for transport, admissions, transfers, and discharges; strengthens coordination with Environmental Services, Facilities, and ancillary departments; and partners with referring facilities, transport resources, rural and tribal partners, post‑acute providers, payers, home care partners, and regional transfer networks to improve access, coordination, continuity, and timely communication.
• Establishes and monitors a throughput scorecard that balances operational, safety, experience, and workforce indicators; develops real‑time capacity dashboards and predictive analytics with the Office of Healthcare Analytics and Informatics; and presents performance trends and strategic recommendations through daily, weekly, and monthly operating reviews that drive accountability and continuous improvement.
• Builds and leads a high‑performing multidisciplinary operations team; fosters a culture of accountability, collaboration, continuous