The Chief Medical Officer (CMO) serves as the chief clinical leader for Decatur Memorial Hospital (DMH), guiding the medical staff and championing clinical excellence and innovation in alignment with Memorial Health’s strategic priorities. As a key member of the hospital’s executive leadership team, the CMO collaborates closely with physicians, residents, and administrative and clinical colleagues to streamline operations, enhance efficiency, reduce costs, and eliminate barriers to care.

The CMO leads physician alignment activities and fosters a culture of accountability, continuous improvement, and high performance. This role oversees initiatives aimed at maximizing positive patient outcomes and improving the overall health status of the communities served by Memorial Health. Through strategic leadership and clinical expertise, the CMO ensures that care delivery is safe, effective, patient-centered, and aligned with the evolving needs of the health system.

Education:

• Medical degree required.
• Master’s degree in health care administration or business administration, advantageous.

Licensure/Certification/Registry:

• License to practice as a physician in the state of Illinois required.
• Fellow of American College of Healthcare Executives (FACHE) preferred.

Experience:

• Proven experience in practicing medicine within a hospital or integrated health system setting for more than five years of leadership experience. Skilled in optimizing practice workflows, enhancing patient access and satisfaction, and supporting provider performance through data-driven decision-making. Adept at fostering collaborative relationships with physicians, nursing staff, administrative teams, and external partners to drive quality outcomes and operational efficiency.

Other Knowledge/Skills/Abilities:

• Change Leadership: Ability to energize stakeholders and sustain their commitment to changes in approaches, processes, and strategies.
• Impact and Influence: Ability to persuade, convince, influence or impress others in order to get them to go along with or to support one’s opinion or position; able to understand others interests and motivations, in order to have a specific impact, effect, or impression on them and/or convince them to take a specific course of action.
• Information Technology Management: Ability to see the potential for administrative and clinical technologies to support process and performance improvement; actively sponsors the continuous seeking of enhance technological capabilities. Actively sponsors the implementation and ongoing optimization of digital tools (i.e. Electronic Health Record) to enhance patient and clinical outcomes.
• Knowledge Management: Demonstrated command of national trends/issues in health service delivery, payment systems, and regulatory/accreditation standards pertinent to areas(s) of responsibility, and the drive and ability to maintain advanced leadership understanding of such knowledge
• Process and Quality Management: Ability to analyze and design or improve an organizational process, including incorporating the principles of high reliability, continuous quality improvement, and user-centered design.
• Project Management: Ability to plan, execute and oversee a multi-year project involving significant resources, scope and impact to meet unique goals and objectives.
• Relationship and Network Development: Ability to establish, build and sustain professional contacts for the purpose of building networks of people with similar goals that support similar interests
• Ensure fulfillment of mission and progress towards vision. Exhibit behaviors consistent with Memorial Health values, and ensure strategic plan is cascaded throughout the organization to achieve desired business outcomes.
• Build and maintain a cohesive team. Provide leadership, direction and support for members of the team including onboarding of new colleagues, triaging of work, appropriate staffing levels, expectation setting, resource allocation, and follow through of assignments. Interprets polices, objectives and operational procedures and represents organization in a positive manner.
• Leads the full employee lifecycle for medical staff colleagues and DMH medical staff, including recruitment, selection, onboarding, development, performance management, and succession planning. Actively coaches and develops medical staff to reach their highest potential by providing meaningful feedback, educational resources, and growth opportunities. Conducts annual performance evaluations and implements strategic succession plans to ensure long-term organizational strength and leadership continuity within DMH medical staff.
• Establish a high level of trust and credibility with the medical staff and promotes alignment of physician activities with the goals and strategies of the health system. Serves as a resource in addressing medical developments and assists colleagues in interpreting and understanding medical issues.
• Builds the capacity, capability and credibility of the medical staff of MH Affiliates. Oversees performance, quality and behavioral review of MH Medical staffs as necessary.  
• • To include but not limited to peer review;
  • privileging and credentialing,
  • establishing goals and objectives for medical directors and assisting with achievement of the stated goals; coordinates the evaluation process.
  • Assist Department/Committee Chairmen in the fulfillment of their stated duties and intervene as appropriate.
  • Coordinate and disseminate information brought before and actions taken by the Medical Staff Executive Committee (MEC).
  • Attend Medical Staff Department/Committee meetings upon request and as appropriate;
  • Maintain familiarity with Medical Staff Bylaws, Rules and Regulations, and Policies, as well as the portions of the federal, state, and Joint Commission regulations that impact medical staff;
• Actively participates as a contributing member of the affiliate hospital leadership teams, including but not limited to Operational Management Team (OMT)  CMO will act as the voice of the medical staff at the hospital OMT. Evaluate opportunities to collaborate across MH affiliates in areas that will improve access to care and efficiency of resources. Develop and enhance relationships with internal and external stakeholders, including universities, schools systems, government entities and key business partners. Evaluate opportunities for partnership that will improve safety, quality, access and the efficient use of organizational resources.
• Ensures up-to-date quality monitoring, credentialing systems, professional behavior, peer review and corrective action procedures.
• Leads strategic initiatives to identify, prioritize, and reduce clinical process and outcome variation, fostering a culture of continuous improvement. Champions the delivery of safe, efficient, and evidence-based care across DMH by guiding teams in the implementation of best practices. Actively collaborates with clinical and operational leaders to enhance care design, streamline workflows, and monitor the quality and effectiveness of clinical processes to ensure optimal patient outcomes.
• In cooperation with the MHS leadership work to shape and bring to fruition MH’s clinical information technology plan. Promotes the use of informatics systems to advance clinical decision making. Ensures optimal IT system usability to maximize experience for physician users.  Participates in the evaluation, selection, and integration of health technology and information management systems that support health service needs and the efficient utilization of resources for emergency medical services.  
• The DMH CMO will maintain an active clinical practice while also contributing to the strategic and operational leadership of DMH. This role is structured to include approximately70% leadership duties and 30% clinical responsibilities. Clinical responsibilities include direct patient care, clinical decision-making, and collaboration with multidisciplinary teams.
• Partners with the MH Leadership in coordinating quality, safety and operations improvement throughout MH. Ensures initiatives are executed in collaboration with medical partners, leaders, and colleagues.
• Effectively manages large and small-scale projects. Exercises good project management discipline and rigor in managing tasks, deliverables and needed resources. Completes projects within prescribed timeline and budget. Ensures all scope changes are evaluated, communicated and approved by appropriate parties prior to implementation. Evaluates implementations and makes adjustments accordingly. Determine which programs are relevant and profitable for the organization and which are not.
• Ensures compliance with all regulatory agencies governing health care delivery and the rules of accrediting bodies. Maintain familiarity with Medical Staff Bylaws, Rules and Regulations, and Policies, as well as the portions of the federal, state, and Joint Commission regulations that impact medical colleagues.
• Represents MH in external events as an invited speaker, lecturer and/or representative on topics relevant to expertise and organizational mission. Participate in community outreach and networking programs. Participates in local civic organizations and community services, including roles on community, state, and/or national boards of directions whose purpose may be in concert with, or benefit to, MH. Represents MH to governmental agencies and other organizations; participates in professional organizations and related activities in order to keep abreast of current trends, and informs Affiliate Board of Directors and leadership team of relevant information. 
• Perform other related work as required or requested.

The intent of this job description is to provide a representative summary of the major duties and responsibilities performed by incumbents of this job.  Incumbents may be requested to perform tasks other than those specifically presented in this description.