Director, Clinical Applications

Compass Health Center•Chicago, IL

13h

About The Position

The Director, Clinical Applications leads the strategy, optimization, and day-to-day management of Compass Health Center’s EHR and other clinical applications. The role partners closely with clinical leaders and frontline teams to understand care delivery needs and ensure technology supports safe, efficient, and compliant care. The director oversees application configuration, testing, upgrades, training, vendor management, adoption, and evaluation of AI-enabled capabilities that may enhance clinical documentation and workflows. The role owns the roadmap, configuration standards, priorities, and lifecycle management for clinical applications; translates clinical and business needs into system requirements; and coordinates with Data, Security, Infrastructure, revenue cycle, and other teams on integrations, reporting, access, and downstream systems. The director also leads and develops the clinical applications team while remaining hands-on with complex or high-impact work. This position is part of an operations team supporting Compass Health Center’s behavioral health services, including IOP, PHP, and outpatient programs.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree in Health Informatics, Information Systems, Healthcare Administration, Nursing, a behavioral health or clinical discipline, or a related field; equivalent relevant experience may be considered.
5+ years of experience with EHR/EMR applications, clinical systems, healthcare technology, or related work.
3+ years of experience leading or managing clinical application, EHR, or healthcare technology professionals.
Strong experience with clinical application configuration, optimization, implementation, and ongoing management.
Ability to understand clinical workflows and translate them into effective system workflows and requirements.
Experience partnering directly with clinicians, operational leaders, and other healthcare stakeholders.
Strong problem-solving, communication, prioritization, and stakeholder management skills.
Understanding of healthcare privacy, security, regulatory, and documentation requirements.

Nice To Haves

Experience in behavioral health, IOP, PHP, outpatient mental health, substance use treatment, or a similar clinical environment.
Strong understanding of behavioral health workflows, including intake, assessment, treatment planning, therapy, psychiatry, documentation, utilization management, and discharge.
Experience optimizing an established EHR and related clinical applications.
Experience with Sigmund AURA or other behavioral health-focused clinical systems.
Experience with clinical documentation improvement, system integrations, and AI-enabled clinical workflows.

Responsibilities

Partner with clinical leaders and frontline users to understand care delivery across IOP, PHP, and outpatient behavioral health programs.
Ensure EHR and related application workflows support intake, treatment planning, documentation, scheduling, utilization, and discharge.
Identify system friction, workarounds, unnecessary steps, and documentation burden, and develop practical improvements.
Distinguish process problems from system problems before recommending changes.
Balance user experience with clinical quality, compliance, reporting, billing, and operational needs.
Use feedback and performance data to identify and prioritize improvements.
Own the roadmap, configuration standards, priorities, and lifecycle management for the EHR and related clinical applications.
Lead application configuration, testing, upgrades, enhancements, and implementation of new functionality.
Translate clinical and business needs into clear system requirements and configuration decisions.
Create a clear process for application requests, priorities, and changes.
Partner with Data, Security, Infrastructure, revenue cycle, and other teams when changes affect integrations, reporting, access, or downstream systems.
Remain hands-on with complex or high-impact application work.
Serve as a clinical technology partner to clinical, operational, quality, compliance, and executive leaders.
Bring clinical and technical teams together to solve workflow and system problems.
Partner with training resources to support onboarding, system changes, adoption, and ongoing education.
Identify and evaluate AI-enabled capabilities that can reduce documentation burden, simplify workflows, or improve clinical information quality.
Ensure AI-enabled workflows include appropriate clinical review, privacy, security, and operational safeguards.
Manage clinical application vendor relationships, including support, escalations, product roadmaps, and optimization opportunities.
Lead and develop the clinical applications team and set clear priorities.
Set expectations for responsiveness, documentation, quality, testing, and partnership with users.
Manage team capacity while remaining actively involved in the work.