Vice President & Chief Compliance Officer

Responsibilities

• Provide executive leadership for UTMB’s enterprise compliance, privacy, conflicts of interest, and fraud, waste, and abuse programs.
• Serve as the designated senior compliance officer with authority, independence, and responsibility for program effectiveness, consistent with UT System Regents’ Rules and OIG guidance.
• Establish, maintain, and oversee system wide compliance policies, procedures, standards of conduct, and policy governance structures.
• Chair compliance governance committees and function as an independent, objective authority for evaluating and escalating compliance matters.
• Ensure compliance with applicable federal and state healthcare laws and regulations, including HIPAA, HITECH, Stark Law, Anti Kickback Statute, False Claims Act, and Conditions of Participation.
• Ensure compliance with privacy laws, including but not limited to HIPAA and FERPA, and is accountable for privacy governance, policy framework, workforce training, and PHI incident and breach response.
• Oversee investigations, corrective actions, and remediation activities in response to identified compliance issues and regulatory findings.
• Design and oversee an enterprise compliance and privacy education strategy, including role based training for workforce members exposed to higher risk activities.
• Maintain ongoing training that reflects regulatory changes, industry trends, and internal incident and audit findings.
• Monitor training completion, effectiveness, and continuous improvement of educational methodologies.
• Oversee confidential and anonymous compliance reporting mechanisms, including the compliance hotline, ensuring non retaliation and appropriate response.
• Promote open communication and transparency across clinical, academic, research, and administrative operations.
• Provide structured, timely reporting on compliance risks, trends, and program effectiveness to executive leadership and governance bodies.
• Lead enterprise compliance risk assessments and ongoing regulatory change monitoring.
• Oversee risk based compliance monitoring, auditing, and assurance activities.
• Maintain enterprise risk reporting, track remediation activities, and provide actionable insights to leadership.
• Conduct third party and vendor compliance, privacy, and security risk assessments.
• Partner with Human Resources, Legal, and leadership to ensure consistent enforcement of compliance standards and disciplinary guidelines.
• Ensure timely investigation, documentation, and resolution of compliance incidents, including hotline matters and conflicts of interest disclosures.
• Use lessons learned from audits, investigations, and incidents to enhance program effectiveness and prevent recurrence.
• Collaborate with Legal, IT, Human Resources, Health Information Management, and operational leaders to embed compliance requirements into workflows and business processes.
• Partner with clinical, research, and operational stakeholders to ensure compliant EMR configuration, access controls, and data governance.
• Provide compliance due diligence support for mergers, acquisitions, affiliations, divestitures, and strategic initiatives.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree required in healthcare administration, business administration, public administration, law, nursing, or a related field plus ten (10) years of progressive experience in healthcare compliance, regulatory affairs, privacy, risk management, audit, or a related discipline, within a complex healthcare or academic medical center environment to include five (5) years of executive or senior leadership experience directing enterprise level compliance, ethics, privacy, or risk management functions.
• Demonstrated experience designing, implementing, and overseeing an effective enterprise compliance and ethics program, consistent with federal and state healthcare laws and recognized industry frameworks.
• Thorough working knowledge of applicable healthcare laws and regulations, including HIPAA/HITECH, Stark Law, Anti Kickback Statute, False Claims Act, and Conditions of Participation.
• Demonstrated ability to act with independence and objectivity, advise executive leadership and governing bodies, and manage sensitive regulatory and investigative matters.