NKC Health, located in North Kansas City, Missouri, seeks a transformational, data-oriented enterprise leader to serve as its next Senior Vice President and Chief Quality Officer (SVP/CQO). The SVP will be a key member of a strong, agile senior leadership team with a profound focus on providing high-quality care to the community. NKC Health's collaborative, responsive, and nimble culture sets it apart from other local hospitals. It allows the health system to operate as a high-touch organization where patients' needs truly come first in an accessible community setting and has helped establish NKC Health as one of the region's best places to practice. This is a compelling opportunity to lead quality, safety, clinical outcomes, regulatory performance, analytics, and performance transformation across inpatient, outpatient, and physician practice settings, helping NKC Health move beyond retrospective reporting and regulatory readiness toward a more predictive, operational, and data-informed model of clinical excellence.
NKC Health is an independent, regional health system with a long-standing commitment to high-quality, community-based care. Formerly known as North Kansas City Hospital and Meritas Health, the organization includes more than 4,700 team members, over 600 physicians, and care delivery across 35 locations. The system has approximately 451 beds and roughly 20,000 annual admissions, with reported 2024 revenue of $2.9 billion. NKC Health has strong clinical and organizational foundations on which the next SVP/CQO can build. The organization has received recognition for patient safety, clinical outcomes, service line performance, and workplace culture, including a Leapfrog "A" Hospital Safety Grade, U.S. News & World Report high-performing recognition, Forbes recognition as a Best Midsize Employer and Best Employer for Women, and the Missouri Hospital Association's 2025 Aim for Excellence Award for outstanding clinical outcomes. NKC Health has also joined the Mayo Clinic Care Network, providing access to Mayo Clinic expertise while maintaining its independent identity. As NKC Health moves toward the future, the organization is focused on maturing its enterprise approach to quality, safety, outcomes, physician accountability, and performance improvement. The SVP/CQO will play a central role in redesigning the quality function into an integrated system for clinical excellence, patient safety, outcomes improvement, physician variation management, operational performance, and value-based success. This leader will establish clear priorities, measurable goals, executive dashboards, and accountability structures that help leaders across the organization focus on the highest-impact opportunities.
Reporting to the President and Chief Executive Officer, with dotted-line accountability to the Senior Vice President and Chief Operating Officer, the SVP/CQO will partner closely with the CMO, CNO, and other senior executives to improve the quality of care and patient safety enterprise-wide across NKC Health. The SVP/CQO will provide strategic and operational leadership for the organization's quality, safety, regulatory, and performance improvement programs across North Kansas City Hospital and its affiliated care network. This leader will advance clinical quality outcomes, accreditation readiness, infection prevention, risk management, and regulatory compliance while fostering a culture of continuous improvement and accountability. The SVP/CQO will be a champion of evidence-based and modern best practices in healthcare and will further a culture of data-driven decision-making. The successful candidate will support and lead key governance, quality, and medical staff committees, serving as a trusted advisor to senior leadership, the Board, and clinical teams on matters related to quality, safety, and performance.
The ideal candidate will be an approachable, visible, and highly collaborative leader who can effectively connect physicians, leaders, and frontline team members. They will bring the ability to think strategically while remaining willing to engage personally in the details of complex initiatives, serving as both a mentor to their team and a trusted partner across the organization. The SVP/CQO will be a well-rounded healthcare quality leader, creative problem solver, and professional of the highest integrity. The candidate will demonstrate deep knowledge of contemporary quality and process improvement practices, with familiarity with Lean, Six Sigma, and other performance improvement methodologies. A clinical background as a physician, nurse, pharmacist, or other licensed clinician is preferred but not required; more important is the ability to build trust, exercise influence across the enterprise, and translate quality strategy into measurable improvement.
Interested parties should direct resumes, nominations, and inquiries to Jason Petros and Trey Wilson through the office of Stacy Lind via email at [email protected] or apply for this position using the buttons below.