Capacity Management Advisor

Saint Luke's Health System•Kansas City, MO

About The Position

Lead specialty-specific initiatives to optimize patient access, ambulatory capacity, and provider schedule utilization across multiple service lines. Serve as a strategic access partner to operational, clinical, and executive leadership, improving access performance in alignment with division-specific and organizational board-level access goals. Drive data-informed decisions and access innovations by developing specialty-specific digital access strategies, optimizing scheduling workflows and decision trees, and testing and optimizing system builds as programs grow or change. Improve patient throughput and scheduling accuracy, efficiency, and effectiveness while enhancing patient and provider experience and supporting sustainable access and capacity management across ambulatory and radiology services. Partner with leaders to assess provider-template objectives and ensure templates align with specialty-specific access expectations. Evaluate self-scheduling expansion for clinical appropriateness, access impact, and operational readiness; establish governance that balances patient convenience with clinical safety and scheduling integrity; and monitor scheduling pathways to identify refinements that improve appointment accuracy, reduce leakage and rework, optimize capacity, and enhance patient experience. The role is measured in part by the completion rate for major capacity management projects: the percentage of approved major access projects completed within the fiscal year, on time and within scope, against defined success criteria. The stated target is completion of at least 85–90% of 4–8 major projects annually. Success criteria include delivery by the agreed milestone or fiscal year-end, achievement and executive sponsor validation of scope objectives, completed operational handoff, defined or realized KPI impact, and no unresolved high-risk issues affecting access performance.

Requirements

Five years of progressive experience in healthcare operations, ambulatory access, capacity management, or healthcare analytics, including experience leading complex operational improvement initiatives.
Demonstrated experience influencing operational, clinical, or physician leadership and driving cross-functional change.
Experience leading projects or initiatives that affect patient access, workflow design, or performance outcomes.
Strong analytical skills and experience using data to identify trends, performance gaps, and improvement opportunities.
Bachelor’s degree in healthcare, business, informatics, or a related field, or an equivalent combination of education and experience.
Epic Cadence proficiency or advanced experience in ambulatory scheduling workflows is described as optional/required, including the ability to guide system design decisions, evaluate workflow impact, and provide strategic oversight of scheduling structures. Hands-on template building is not required.
Epic Cadence proficiency is stated as required to obtain within six months of hire in an optional qualification note.

Nice To Haves

Experience leading ambulatory access or capacity management and scheduling initiatives in a multi-specialty environment.
Experience presenting operational performance insights to leadership.
Experience aligning operational initiatives with enterprise or board-level performance goals.
Experience designing or supporting digital patient access solutions, such as patient self-scheduling, online scheduling tools, or patient portal scheduling workflows.
Master’s degree in healthcare administration, informatics, business, or a related field.

Responsibilities

Partner with administrators, operational leaders, specialty Medical Directors, operational directors, clinic managers, and IT teams to design and optimize provider templates, Epic auto-search functionality, scheduling decision trees, and patient self-scheduling workflows.
Assess how provider-template design affects access and capacity, including session limits, held time, and unavailable time, and align templates with specialty-specific access expectations.
Work with operational and clinical leaders in ambulatory and ancillary practices to clarify provider and practice objectives and identify root causes behind template requests.
Evaluate clinical appropriateness, access impact, and operational readiness for expanding self-scheduling capabilities.
Continuously evaluate self-scheduling expansion and implementation of new Epic technology.
Develop governance and decision frameworks that balance patient convenience with clinical safety and scheduling integrity.
Analyze complex access, capacity, and scheduling data to identify trends, performance gaps, and specialty-specific optimization opportunities.
Develop and present data-driven insights and recommendations to operational, clinical, and executive leaders.
Monitor scheduling pathway performance, including decision trees and self-scheduling logic, and recommend refinements to improve appointment accuracy, reduce leakage and rework, optimize capacity utilization, and enhance patient experience.
Lead complex operational improvement initiatives and cross-functional projects affecting patient access, workflow design, or performance outcomes.