Decedent Affairs Manager, Administrative

Vanderbilt University Medical Center•Nashville, TN

9h•Onsite

About The Position

Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC) is seeking a Decedent Affairs Manager to supervise a team of 6 Decedent Affairs Coordinators. This role is crucial in planning and coordinating the operations of Decedent Affairs to ensure the proper disposition of every deceased patient across all Vanderbilt Health system locations. The manager will also assist with budget, payroll, and administrative functions, provide guidance on patient death protocols, review documentation, and implement process improvements for accuracy and consistency. Additionally, the role involves hiring, training, mentoring staff, conducting performance reviews, managing employee time and payroll, and acting as a liaison between the unit, families, and external agencies such as the Medical Examiner, funeral homes, and state vital records offices. The manager will also coordinate autopsy services, maintain contracts, manage supplies, develop training materials, and represent the department on committees. Key responsibilities include facilitating the viewing and identification of deceased individuals, addressing concerns from families and staff, ensuring the accuracy of Death Certificates, preparing them for the State VRISM database, handling notarized affidavits, managing fetal death reports, coordinating cremations and burials for infants/fetuses, releasing deceased patient valuables, meeting with families, compiling reports, coordinating the release process for all deceased patients, and arranging burial services for indigent patients. The manager will also investigate leads to locate next of kin and serve as a point of contact for families regarding funeral and cremation arrangements, and act as a disaster team leader.

Requirements

Bachelor's Degree (or equivalent experience)
3 years of management/supervisory experience
Relevant Work Experience
5 years experience
High School Diploma or GED

Nice To Haves

Clerical/Administrative (Advanced): Clerical/Administration is a skill which includes most clerical and administrative functions typically carried out by secretaries, administrators and others who perform a clerical role. Among the duties are: Ad Hoc Reporting, Calendar Maintenance, Data Entry, Document Duplication, Document Filing and Maintenance, Document Preparation, Employee Record Maintenance, Employee Time Recording, Faxing and Electronic Mailing, Inventory Management, Mail Sorting and Distribution, Meeting Coordination and Scheduling, Message Management, Receptionist Tasks, Special Projects, Spreadsheet Preparation, Travel Arrangements, and Word Processing and Typing.
Leadership (Intermediate): Formulates a vision while motivating & guiding employees promoting engagement. Leaders state precise goals, ensures the commitment of individuals to those goals, defines the methods of measurement, and provides the incentive to accomplish measureable outcomes.
Quality Management (Novice): Developing a systematic process of checking to see whether a process or service is meeting specific requirements.
Business Results (Novice): Ability to achieve business results while focusing on quality, customer satisfaction, and stewardship.
Compliance (Intermediate): Understanding the rules, regulations, sanctions and other statutory requirements, guidelines and instructions relating to governing bodies and organizations, both internally and externally.
Operations Planning (Intermediate): Anticipates resource needs to meet objectives and implements appropriate processes.
People Management (Intermediate): Interacting, communicating, building relationships and developing employees.
Supporting Colleagues: - Develops Self and Others: Invests time, energy, and enthusiasm in developing self/others to help improve performance and gain knowledge in new areas. - Builds and Maintains Relationships: Maintains regular contact with key colleagues and stakeholders using formal and informal opportunities to expand and strengthen relationships. - Communicates Effectively: Recognizes group interactions and modifies one's own communication style to suit different situations and audiences.
Delivering Excellent Services : - Serves Others with Compassion: Seeks to understand current and future needs of relevant stakeholders and customizes services to better address them. - Solves Complex Problems: Approaches problems from different angles; Identifies new possibilities to interpret opportunities and develop concrete solutions. - Offers Meaningful Advice and Support: Provides ongoing support and coaching in a constructive manner to increase employees' effectiveness.
Ensuring High Quality - Performs Excellent Work: Engages regularly in formal and informal dialogue about quality; directly addresses quality issues promptly. - Ensures Continuous Improvement: Applies various learning experiences by looking beyond symptoms to uncover underlying causes of problems and identifies ways to resolve them. - Fulfills Safety and Regulatory Requirements: Understands all aspects of providing a safe environment and performs routine safety checks to prevent safety hazards from occurring.
Managing Resources Effectively: - Demonstrates Accountability: Demonstrates a sense of ownership, focusing on and driving critical issues to closure. - Stewards Organizational Resources: Applies understanding of the departmental work to effectively manage resources for a department/area. - Makes Data Driven Decisions: Demonstrates strong understanding of the information or data to identify and elevate opportunities.
Fostering Innovation: - Generates New Ideas: Proactively identifies new ideas/opportunities from multiple sources or methods to improve processes beyond conventional approaches. - Applies Technology: Demonstrates an enthusiasm for learning new technologies, tools, and procedures to address short-term challenges. - Adapts to Change: Views difficult situations and/or problems as opportunities for improvement; actively embraces change instead of emphasizing negative elements.

Responsibilities

Managing deaths for all Vanderbilt Health system locations.
Providing guidance to all hospital locations on patient death.
Reviewing all documentation and notification for completion at every location.
Researching, developing, and implementing changes in processes to assure accuracy and consistency at all locations.
Hiring, training, and mentoring staff on processes, responsibilities, reporting requirements, and initiating and/or recommending personnel actions, such as hiring, termination, etc.
Conducting performance reviews and ensuring all performance reviews are conducted in a timely manner.
Counseling employees with regard to disciplinary actions taken in response to violations of institutional policies or procedures.
Preparing and initiating departmental schedule.
Coordinating scheduling needs.
Monitor employee time for overtime, sick time, FMLA, and vacation usage. Entering and approving time into payroll system.
Conducting departmental staff meetings.
Acting as liaison between unit, family, and outside agencies, such as Medical Examiner, TDS, funeral homes, State Vital Records.
Coordinating autopsy services with Department of Pathology
Maintaining contracts, monitoring charges, ensuring contracts remain current.
Scheduling and monitoring maintenance /repairs.
Assessing inventory and managing supplies and forms for the department.
Developing employee, nursing, physician training materials, as well as information/ documents for family related to death.
Coordinating with Management any changes required with practices or processes affected by changes in State Regulations for all locations.
Serving as department representative on committees.
Facilitating viewing/identification of deceased in morgue.
Addressing concerns/issues from family, staff, and outside vendors.
Being liaison between physicians and funeral homes to assure Death Certificates are complete and accurate.
Partnering with Tennessee Health Department and VRISM Death Certificate team to ensure Vanderbilt Medical Center is compliant with State Death Certificate vital events registration system.
Preparing Death Certificates for distribution in the State VRISM database.
Notary Republic – Preparing and submitting Notarized Death Certificate affidavits.
Entering fetal death reports into VRISM for L&D and GYN Surgery
Coordinating Vanderbilt sponsored cremations for infants/fetuses including obtaining cremation permit and Death Certificates. Scheduling cremation with Vendor.
Arranging yearly burial of cremated remains.
Coordinating the release of deceased patient valuables with Admitting office
Meeting with families, answering questions and returning cremated remains.
Compiling and distributing monthly reports within the Hospital and to outside agencies.
Coordinating release process for all deceased patients
Completing application and coordinating burial services for Indigent deceased patients with Metro Social Service.
Investigating all leads to locate next of kin for deceased patients and ensuring next of kin is notified of death once identified.
Serving as point of contact for families to address questions related to funeral/ cremation arrangements.
Serving as disaster team leader. Maintaining and updating all departmental disaster related materials associated with emergency preparedness plans.
Participates in projects and/or on-going work activities (timelines, work plans, deliverables) aligned with area initiatives.
Supervises day to day performance of staff as assigned through ongoing assessment and coaching to achieve goals.
Ensures effective operation of an area through development and supervision of processes.
Assists in preparation of the annual operating and capital budgets.