Vice President Patient Experience Strategy

Department Overview

The Vice President, Patient Experience Strategy is an executive leader who partners with the CXO in shaping and advancing the organization's vision, strategy, and operational framework for exceptional patient experiences across the continuum of care. This position leads enterprise-wide efforts to develop patient-centered leadership capabilities, establish a comprehensive compassionate communication framework, restore and strengthen patient trust, and strategically design, optimize, and continuously improve the end-to-end patient journey. This leader will execute personally on the strategy as well as lead a team of advisors and journey partners to achieve the goals set.

Working collaboratively with executive leadership, clinical leaders, operational teams, faculty, researchers, staff, patients, and community members, the Vice President drives a culture of empathy, accountability, transparency, and service excellence that advances organizational goals and improves patient, family, caregiver, and workforce experiences. The role serves as the principal partner of the CXO on patient experience strategy and ensures alignment between organizational values, care delivery, communication practices, and patient outcomes.

Function/Duties of Position

• Enterprise Patient Experience Strategy: Partner with CXO to lead the organization's comprehensive patient experience vision, strategic roadmap, priorities, goals, metrics, and accountability structures. Ensure alignment with Knight Cancer Institute mission, values, quality, safety, equity, and growth objectives.
• Patient Journey Design & Optimization: Lead design, evaluation, and continuous improvement of the end-to-end patient journey across all care settings, identifying opportunities to reduce friction, improve access, strengthen care transitions, and elevate patient-centered outcomes.
• Compassionate Communication Framework: Develop, implement, and sustain an integrated compassionate communication framework that establishes consistent expectations and practices for leaders, providers, faculty, staff, and learners across the organization. Achieve training and accountability measures across the Knight through Advisor team.
• Trust Restoration & Patient Advocacy: Lead enterprise initiatives focused on restoring, measuring, and strengthening patient trust through transparency, responsiveness, service recovery, patient engagement, and accountability mechanisms.
• Leadership Development (specific to patient experience tactics): Design and advance leadership development strategies that build organizational capabilities in empathy, relationship-centered care, communication excellence, emotional intelligence, and patient-centered leadership. Execute through Advisor team.
• Experience Insights: Develop and oversee systems for analyzing and translating patient experience, trust, feedback, complaint, and engagement data into actionable strategies and measurable improvements.
• Colleague Engagement & Partnership: Collaborate with executive leaders, operational leaders, clinicians, patients, families, community representatives, and advisory councils to advance patient experience priorities and organizational culture change.
• Strategic Leadership & Organizational Representation: Represent patient experience priorities at executive, institutional, regional, and national forums. Monitor emerging industry trends, best practices, and innovations to continuously advance organizational performance.

Required Qualifications

• Master's degree in Healthcare Administration, Business Administration, Organizational Development, Public Health, Nursing, Healthcare Leadership, or related field.
• Minimum 8 years of progressive leadership experience in healthcare, patient experience, service excellence, organizational transformation, healthcare operations, quality improvement, or related fields and 2 years in a patient experience or operations leadership role (Director or above).
• Demonstrated success leading culture transformation, patient-centered care initiatives, communication improvement strategies, and organizational change efforts.
• Experience influencing executive leadership teams and building cross-functional partnerships.
• Expertise in patient experience strategy, service excellence, and patient-centered care.
• Strong knowledge of healthcare operations, quality, safety, equity, and performance improvement principles.
• Demonstrated ability to lead complex organizational change and culture transformation.
• Exceptional communication, facilitation, executive presence, and relationship-building skills.
• Strong analytical and strategic planning abilities.
• Ability to influence without direct reporting authority and build alignment among diverse stakeholders.
• Knowledge of patient experience measurement methodologies and performance metrics.
• Commitment to diversity, equity, inclusion, belonging, and health equity.
• Certified Patient Experience Professional (CPXP)

Preferred Qualifications

• Doctoral degree (PhD, EdD, DrPH, DNP, MD, or equivalent).
• Academic health center or integrated health system experience.
• Experience leading large-scale patient journey redesign efforts.
• National recognition or thought leadership in patient experience, service excellence, or healthcare transformation.
• Lean, Six Sigma, or equivalent performance improvement certification
• Executive leadership development certification or fellowship

Additional Details

• Primarily in office and healthcare environment. Frequent interaction with patients, families, staff, physicians, executives, and community stakeholders. Regular attendance at meetings throughout clinical and administrative locations. Occasional evening and weekend commitments. Limited domestic travel for conferences, professional development, benchmarking, and external partnerships.
• Ability to perform work in an office and healthcare environment. Frequent sitting, standing, walking, speaking, and computer use. Ability to move throughout multiple facilities and attend patient care, administrative, and community settings. Ability to lift up to 20 pounds occasionally. Frequent use of standard office equipment and technology.

Why apply to OHSU?

We are Oregon's only public academic health center. In addition to caring for patients, we lead groundbreaking research. We also train the next generation of health care professionals. As Portland's largest employer, we give you opportunities to learn and advance in a system of hospitals and clinics across Oregon and Southwest Washington. All are welcome. OHSU welcomes people of all ages, ethnicities, genders, national origins, religions and sexual orientations. We are striving to build an anti-racist, multicultural institution and encourage people with diverse backgrounds to apply. To request reasonable accommodation, contact [email protected]