The Executive Director for Risk Management is responsible for the activities of UCSF Health which support the Mission, Vision, and Values of the organization and promotes high-quality patient care, compliance with UCSF Medical Center policies, patient safety, and patient and family services and care. The Director is available 24/7 to provide administrator on-call equivalent support to the entire enterprise and other risk management staff who are on call.
Reporting to the Chief Quality Officer, the Executive Director of Risk Management will manage the risk management operations and professional liability programs for all UCSF Health, UCSF Schools of Medicine, Nursing, Dentistry and Pharmacy, UCSF affiliates, and associated professional liability programs. The Executive Director also has broad oversight of the risk programs at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital and the UCSF Fresno clinical programs (each has a local risk manager that provides day-to-day management of the programs).
The Executive Director participates with executive leadership to develop long-term risk management strategies and ensures that quality risk management is provided in alignment with internal policy and external regulations. The Executive Director may represent the organization in litigation matters and coordinates with attorneys.
The Executive Director works independently and in collaboration with the Risk Management Staff, other UCSF Health staff, and physician leaders. A crucial part of the Executive Director's role is the development of close, strategic, and collaborative relationships across the institution and outside the institution, including with medical examiners, police, and representatives from other health care facilities. A crucial part of the Executive Director's role is to think critically and communicate calmly and clearly in situations that involve time pressure and are, at times, emotionally charged.
The Executive Director provides risk advice in a variety of areas, including consent, end-of-life issues, unilateral withdrawal of life-prolonging treatment, mandatory reporting of abuse, child and adult, patient/family/visitor behavior, threat management, medication management, adverse event management, patient complaints and grievances, Medical and Nursing Board complaints, privacy and confidentiality, surgical complications, disclosure of adverse events, discharge and discontinuation of care, elopement and AMA, media requests, policies and procedures.
The Executive Director coordinates physicians, nurses, and staff to reduce the risk of harm to patients by assisting them in the development of retrospective reviews following an adverse event or claim, project managing, or problem-solving.
The Executive Director provides risk analysis related to new business opportunity proposals. The Executive Director reviews contracts related to affiliation and professional services agreements and approves liability insurance limit waivers and indemnification language. The Executive Director reviews and approves requests for Certificates of Insurance for all UCSF physicians, nurses, or staff who provides patient care outside UCSF Health facilities.
The Executive Director plans to develop and supervises detailed technical and risk data analysis, chart review and summary, data collection and data entry into and extraction of data and reports from the UC System-Wide Claims Management database, iVOS, Risk Management Office databases, and UC System-Wide Claim Analysis database, CRICO. The Executive Director regularly reports this information to Senior Leadership, The Risk Management Committee, the Quality Improvement Executive Committee, the Executive Medical Board, and the Governance Advisory Council.
The Executive Director identifies potential problems with the care related to adverse events and liability claims. The Executive Director supervises Risk Management staff in tracking and developing reports related to the Risk Management Consultations.
The Executive Director is responsible for the accuracy of discovery requests in Professional Liability Cases, verifies those responses under penalty of perjury, and supervises the deposition management, trial preparation, and strategy. The Executive Director supervises the management of subpoenas received by Risk Management related to UCSF physicians and staff depositions. The Executive Director will participate in and manage the Risk Management Coordinator in advocacy for the physician related to the deposition, provide deposition preparation counseling of physicians and manage the conduct of outside counsel who wishes to contact our physicians or employees or subpoena them for deposition or trial.
The Executive Director is an active member of the UCOP Risk Management Leadership Council and works in collaboration with UCOP on UCOP initiatives, projects, and requests. As requested, the Executive Director will assist UCOP in the evaluation of other UC programs (e.g. UC Berkeley Student Health Clinic).
The Executive Director is an ex-officio member of numerous Medical Staff and Medical Center Committees and will establish committees and task forces as necessary to accomplish special projects (eg. Consent form revision, Advance Health Care form revision, development of legal health record content, test result routing, patient behavior management).
The Executive Director chairs the allocation committee and co-chairs the risk management committee
The Executive Director provides advice to the clinical, Privacy, Nursing, Patient Relations, Media, Marketing and Quality, and Safety Departments and reviews and approves their work product, correspondence, and forms as requested.
The Executive Director is a licensed California Attorney and demonstrates knowledge of professional liability standards of care for all practitioners (nursing, physician, social workers, etc.) and other laws and regulations, including but not limited to, Joint Commission Standards, HIPAA, The Medicare Conditions of Participation, Title 22 and other California laws and regulations. The Executive Director will demonstrate expertise in health care and professional liability law and the ability to research global issues and provide risk advice accordingly in cooperation with other Risk Management Staff.
