Manager, Operational Excellence

Hospital for Special Surgery•New York, NY

2d•Hybrid

About The Position

The Manager, Operational Excellence will play a critical leadership role in enterprise operational excellence initiatives at Hospital for Special Surgery. Reporting to the Director, Operational Excellence, the Manager partners with clinical and operational leaders to identify opportunities, design solutions, and lead implementation. The role focuses on designing and governing systems for block time management, operating room efficiency, and perioperative throughput. The Manager owns projects from development through completion, including preparing leadership-ready materials, designing change management and communication plans, facilitating multidisciplinary discussions, conducting analytics, and building complex models to inform decisions and performance improvement. The role leads junior team members, sets direction for their work, and contributes to continuous learning and capability building within Operational Excellence. The Operational Excellence team partners with leaders across HSS to translate enterprise priorities into disciplined execution and measurable impact. Its work includes strategic execution, operating model design, portfolio management, and continuous improvement. The team works with multidisciplinary clinical and business leaders to improve performance, operating models, capacity, and access across ambulatory and perioperative care. This position is hybrid in NYC.

Requirements

Bachelor's degree in Healthcare Administration, Business Administration, Engineering, Statistics, or a related field.
Minimum 5 years of consulting, operational excellence, strategy, or equivalent experience with increasing responsibility.
Demonstrated experience managing projects end-to-end and leading cross-functional teams.
Experience using MS Office Suite and data visualization tools to produce high-quality deliverables.
Strong proficiency in analytical and presentation tools such as Excel, PowerPoint, and Visio.
Ability to manage multiple complex projects, priorities, and deadlines with minimal oversight.
Strong verbal and written communication skills, including the ability to present confidently to senior leadership.
Structured problem-solving and critical-thinking skills, with the ability to synthesize ambiguous information into clear recommendations.
Demonstrated stakeholder management and facilitation skills, including the ability to influence without authority.
People management or formal mentoring experience, with the ability to set clear expectations and develop junior staff.
Strong understanding of operational KPIs across one or more care delivery areas.
Experience with workforce planning, labor productivity, or organizational design concepts.
Ability to navigate complex, matrixed organizations with multiple clinical and operational stakeholders.

Nice To Haves

Experience in healthcare-focused consulting or an academic medical center environment.
Master's degree in a related field, such as Industrial & Systems Engineering, Healthcare Administration, or Operations Research.
Experience with Tableau or similar business intelligence tools.
Experience with Epic applications.
Lean/Six Sigma certification or equivalent experience.
Experience supporting or designing care delivery models in an acute or ambulatory setting.
Familiarity with healthcare workforce management systems or labor analytics tools.

Responsibilities

Lead initiatives to optimize block time allocation, utilization, and release policies in collaboration with surgical chiefs, OR scheduling, and hospital leadership.
Develop and maintain analytic frameworks to monitor block utilization, on-time starts, turnover time, case cancellations, and overall OR throughput.
Identify and implement evidence-based perioperative flow practices, including pre-surgical testing, day-of-surgery preparation, PACU throughput, and surgical scheduling optimization.
Partner with surgical teams to improve first-case on-time starts and intraday OR schedule management.
Support block time committees and OR efficiency councils by preparing agendas, synthesizing data, and following through on action items.
Lead strategic perioperative projects that improve operational efficiency and support margin improvement.
Partner with OR, surgical, and anesthesia leaders to optimize functional-area performance, productivity, efficiency, and structural effectiveness.
Collaborate with physicians, clinicians, and operational leaders to redesign patient workflows, care touchpoints, and the perioperative experience.
Facilitate governance structures for perioperative performance improvement and influence alignment among clinical, operational, and executive stakeholders.
Create and facilitate infrastructures for collaborative decision-making and initiative advancement.
Design and implement perioperative best practices using a continuous improvement approach.
Build project plans, prepare final deliverables, and lead stakeholder alignment to execute operational priorities.
Support perioperative capacity planning and forecasting through data analysis, scenario modeling, and evaluation of future demand and resource needs.
Provide executive project management support to the Chief Operating Officer, Chief Strategy Officer, Surgeon-in-Chief, Vice President of Perioperative Services, and other surgical leaders on special projects.
Contribute to Operational Excellence team development through performance management, professional development, and mentoring of junior team members.
Own projects through completion, including developing leadership materials, change management and communication plans, stakeholder discussions, analytics, and complex decision-making models.
Lead junior team members and set direction for their work.