Associate Vice President (AVP) Operations

Job Summary

The Associate Vice President (AVP) of Operations for JMG oversees the operations of clinics and physician services across the health system's medical group. This senior leader is responsible for assessing and implementing performance improvement initiatives focused on operational throughput, clinic flow, and clinical improvement opportunities, working in close collaboration with clinical and business partners to ensure the highest standards of care are maintained.

The AVP leads system-wide initiatives for the care delivery network, drives collaboration across practices and facilities, and ensures alignment with organizational goals to optimize patient outcomes and operational efficiency. The AVP builds standardized playbooks for process improvement, ensures consistent training across practices, and develops change management plans so that new processes are adopted consistently and sustained by every stakeholder group.

Duties and Responsibilities

Operational Leadership

Provides executive oversight of day-to-day operations for medical group clinics and physician services, ensuring safe, high-quality, patient-centered care. Partners with practice leaders, physician leaders, and administrative directors to set and achieve operational goals, budgets, and performance targets. Ensures alignment of practice operations with the health system's strategic priorities, quality goals, and regulatory requirements. Serves as an escalation point for operational issues, resolving barriers across practices, departments, and facilities.

Performance Improvement

Assesses practice performance using data and direct observation; identifies opportunities to improve throughput, clinic flow, access, scheduling, patient wait times, and provider and staff productivity. Leads and sponsors performance improvement initiatives using proven methodologies (e.g., Lean, Six Sigma, PDSA), from diagnosis through implementation and sustainment. Collaborates with clinical leaders to identify and act on clinical improvement opportunities, including quality metrics, care-gap closure, and patient experience. Establishes dashboards and scorecards to monitor key performance indicators and hold leaders accountable for results.

Standardization and Playbooks

Builds new playbooks that standardize process improvements and best practices across all practices in the health system. Ensures consistent training is developed and delivered to practice leaders, providers, and staff so that standard work is applied uniformly. Creates tools, job aids, and operating standards that allow successful practice-level improvements to be replicated at scale.

Change Management

Develops and executes change management plans for the rollout of new processes, workflows, and technologies, with clear communication, training, and reinforcement strategies for each stakeholder group. Engages physicians, advanced practice providers, nursing, front-line staff, and administrative partners early to build buy-in and reduce resistance. Defines adoption and sustainability measures and conducts post-implementation reviews to confirm that gains are maintained.

Collaboration and Stakeholder Partnership

Drives collaboration across practices, hospitals, ambulatory sites, and shared service functions to reduce variation and improve the patient journey. Partners with clinical, finance, IT/informatics, quality, patient experience, revenue cycle, and HR teams to align operational initiatives with organizational goals. Represents the medical group in system-level committees and planning efforts. Partners with multiple stakeholders to coordinate complex projects and operational rollouts, aligning timelines, resources, and accountabilities across practices, facilities, and system functions.

Fiscal Planning and Financial Oversight

Collaborates with the CFO on fiscal planning and budgeting for medical group operations, including annual operating and capital budgets, forecasts, and multi-year financial plans. Provides financial performance oversight by reviewing monthly results against budget, analyzing variances, and directing corrective action plans with practice and physician leaders. Oversees resource allocation (staffing, space, equipment, and capital) to match patient demand, productivity targets, and strategic priorities. Establishes and maintains strong internal controls across practice operations, including cash handling, charge capture, purchasing, and expense approvals, and ensures compliance with audit, regulatory, and system policy requirements. Partners with finance and revenue cycle leaders to improve practice profitability, reduce cost per visit, and support sustainable growth.

People and Financial Stewardship

Leads, coaches, and develops a team of directors, managers, and operations/performance improvement staff; fosters a culture of accountability, transparency, and continuous improvement. Supports recruitment, retention, and engagement of practice leadership and staff. Manages operating budgets and contributes to financial planning, ensuring efficient use of resources and support for growth strategy.

Success Measures

Success is measured by improved clinic throughput, patient access, and cycle times; reduced variation in operations and care delivery across practices; and improved patient, provider, and staff experience scores. Achieves quality, financial, and productivity targets, including financial performance at or better than budget, with sound internal controls and clean audit results. Ensures successful adoption and sustainment of new playbooks and processes across practices. Delivers complex projects and operational rollouts on time and within budget.  Performs all other related job duties as assigned.

Experience

- Generally requires 7 to 10 years of progressive leadership experience in healthcare operations, including ambulatory care, medical group, or physician practice management.
- A minimum of 5 years leading multi-site operations or system-wide initiatives at a director level or above is required.

Education

- Bachelor's degree in healthcare administration, business, nursing, or a related field is required.
- Master's degree (MHA, MBA, MPH, MSN, or equivalent) is strongly preferred.

Skill

General Competencies: Ability to analyze, organize and prioritize work accurately while meeting multiple deadlines. Ability to communicate effectively in both oral and written form. Ability to handle difficult and stressful situations with critical thinking and professional composure. Ability to understand and follow instructions. Ability to exercise sound and independent judgment. Knowledge and skill in use of job appropriate technology and software applications.

Management Competencies : Knowledge of business and management principles involved in strategic planning, resource allocation, human resources modeling, leadership technique, production methods, and coordination of people and resources. Skill in monitoring/assessing the performance to make improvements or take corrective action. Skill in using logic and reasoning to identify the strengths and weaknesses of alternative solutions, conclusions, or approaches to problems. Ability to plan, implement, and evaluate programs. Ability to establish goals and objectives. Ability to recognize, analyze, and solve a variety of problems.

Unit Specific Competencies : Must possess excellent communication skills with demonstrated strength in effective negotiations. Must have prior familiarity and comfort with financial data; understanding of clinical processes and billing (e.g., physician RVU data, clinical instruction ratios, etc.) is required.

Credentials

- Certification in a performance improvement methodology, such as Lean or Six Sigma, is preferred.