Director, Patient Experience

Role Overview

This role is responsible for designing a deeply personalized patient and family experience at Iredell Memorial, ensuring care is delivered in a healing setting that feels coordinated, meaningful, and centered on the needs of patients and families.

The position helps shape and promote a patient- and family-centered culture in alignment with the organization’s values: caring for patients, caring for one another, and caring for the community. It applies evidence-based healthcare practices and service excellence standards to improve patient and family perceptions of care, with at least 90% of tracked areas moving toward target performance. The role also identifies effective practices, supports leaders at Iredell Memorial, and shares successful approaches across the broader organization.

This leader must be able to review and interpret patient feedback, prepare patient perception reports from that data, and design, implement, and evaluate evidence-based strategies that support strategic goals.

Job-Specific Expectations

• Develop strong working relationships and communicate effectively with a wide range of healthcare professionals, including nurses, physicians, middle managers, executives, and frontline staff.
• Own patient perception of care outcomes and maintain productive partnerships with operational leaders.
• Drive initiatives that elevate the patient experience, build accountability systems, and operationalize service behaviors in coordination with organizational development and staff education.
• Equip senior leaders with insights, tools, and evidence-based methods that help sustain a culture of patient- and family-centered care.
• Support operational execution by setting clear expectations and reinforcing evidence-based practices.
• Lead project planning and improvement efforts by working with operational leaders and teams on patient experience initiatives.
• Maintain strong, high-quality communication and support for operational leaders.
• Influence cross-functional teams and peers who do not report directly to this role, and help drive change across the care continuum.
• Contribute ideas and best practices that strengthen the overall patient experience.
• Spot opportunities to improve care and bring in proven practices from other healthcare organizations or industries.
• Challenge outdated methods constructively while balancing collaboration with a strong patient-and-family-first mindset.
• Reinforce the link between employee engagement and patient experience.
• Coordinate smoothly between the Office of Patient Experience, Patient Advocate, Pastoral Care, and Human Resources.
• Partner with Education to create and deliver training on patient experience topics, including professional presentations and sessions for leaders and staff.
• Oversee the volunteer program, including recruitment, retention, and onboarding, and work with volunteer leadership on fundraising and donations.
• Manage the system Patient Family Advisory Council.
• Support listening and learning initiatives such as Patient Advisory Boards, and act as a liaison between patient advisors, physicians, and senior leadership.
• Use Microsoft Office tools, especially Excel, Word, and PowerPoint, at a strong level.

Reporting Relationship

This position is accountable to the Vice President of Medical Affairs.

Requirements

• A bachelor’s degree is required; a master’s degree is preferred.
• At least 5 to 7 years of experience in healthcare, hospitality, or customer service, ideally with operational leadership and supervisory responsibility.
• Consulting experience, either internally or as an independent consultant, is preferred.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to lead discussions with groups.
• Ability to evaluate workflows and identify opportunities for performance improvement.
• Capacity to build a strategic patient experience framework for a campus or health system.
• Comfort working independently, managing deadlines, and ensuring dependable follow-through.
• Strong relationship-building skills across all levels of an organization, along with excellent customer service orientation.
• Ability to understand best practices and tools thoroughly and explain them clearly to support results.
• Moderate to advanced proficiency in Microsoft Office, Excel, and PowerPoint.
• Strong organizational skills.
• A genuine passion for customer relations and patient/family-centered care.
• Ability to analyze data and perform statistical functions.
• Preferred: one year of experience leading cross-functional teams or formal training in process improvement tools.

Additional Information

Physical location: Statesville, North Carolina.