Description
Your passion belongs at UNC Health. Join more than 56,000 teammates working together to improve the health and well-being of the communities we serve across North Carolina.
Summary:
The HCS Capacity Creation & Management Engineer partners with clinical and operational teams to design, implement, and optimize systems, processes, and technologies that improve patient flow, resource utilization, and operational efficiency. The role provides leadership to assigned projects with a goal to create and manage capacity and access across UNC Health or within an assigned area or entity. This role combines engineering principles, data analytics, healthcare operations, clinical workflow knowledge, and change leadership to ensure the right resources are high-quality care.
Working closely with clinical and operations leadership, operations teams, ISD, and executive stakeholders, the Capacity Creation and Management Engineer develops and guides implementation of data-driven solutions that enhance throughput, reduce bottlenecks, improve patient access, and support strategic capacity creation and management. The incumbent is expected to provide leadership in identifying, prioritizing, and executing high impact initiatives in partnership with clinical and operational leaders.
Responsibilities:
- Analyze patient flow, physical capacity utilization, staffing, and resource allocation to identify operational improvement opportunities.
- Design and implement capacity management strategies to optimize inpatient, outpatient, emergency department, perioperative, and/or procedural workflows.
- Develop predictive models and forecasting tools to anticipate patient demand, procedural and operative volumes, admission patterns, and discharge volumes.
- Configure, support, and optimize healthcare capacity management platforms and patient flow technologies in partnership with ISD, clinical teams, and operational teams.
- Monitor key performance indicators (KPIs) such as occupancy, length of stay, emergency department boarding, OR/procedural utilization and flow, transfer times, and bed turnaround.
- Lead process improvement initiatives using Lean, Six Sigma, systems engineering, and performance improvement methodologies.
- Create dashboards, reports, and visualizations that provide real-time operational insights for leadership.
- Support command center operations and develop workflows that improve situational awareness and decision-making.
- Partner with ISD teams to integrate electronic health record (EHR) systems, patient flow applications, and operational analytics platforms.
- Evaluate healthcare operations through simulation modeling, capacity analysis, and scenario planning.
- Ensure compliance with healthcare regulations, organizational policies, and patient safety standards.
- Document workflows, technical configurations, operational procedures, and system enhancements.
- Provide training and ongoing support to operational and clinical users of capacity creation best practices.
Other Information
Education Requirements:
- Bachelor's degree in Industrial Engineering, Systems Engineering, Healthcare Engineering, Operations Research, Computer Science, Healthcare Administration, or a related field.
- Master’s degree preferred.
Professional Experience Requirements:
- Requires three (3) years of experience in healthcare operations, capacity management, patient flow optimization, or operational excellence.
- Requires previous experience working within hospitals, integrated delivery networks (IDNs), academic medical centers, or healthcare consulting environments.
- Requires experience leading change and engaging stakeholders to accelerate adoption.
- Requires previous experience working with electronic health record (EHR) systems and with data visualization and business intelligence tools such as Power BI, Tableau, or Qlik.
Knowledge/Skills/and Abilities Requirements:
- Knowledge of healthcare operations, patient throughput, bed management, and clinical workflows.
- Knowledge of change leadership principles and frameworks.
- Strong analytical, problem-solving, and project management skills.
- Proficiency with SQL and data analysis tools; experience with Python or R is preferred.
- Excellent communication and stakeholder management skills.
Job Details
Legal Employer: NCHEALTH
Entity: Shared Services
Organization Unit: System Operations Admin
Work Type: Full Time
Standard Hours Per Week: 40.00
Salary Range: $44.56 - $64.06 per hour (Hiring Range)
Pay offers are determined by experience and internal equity
Work Assignment Type: Hybrid
Work Schedule: Day Job
Location of Job: US:NC:Morrisville
Exempt From Overtime: Exempt: Yes
This position is employed by NC Health (Rex Healthcare, Inc., d/b/a NC Health), a private, fully-owned subsidiary of UNC Health Care System, in a department that provides shared services to operations across UNC Health Care; except that, if you are currently a UNCHCS State employee already working in a designated shared services department, you may remain a UNCHCS State employee if selected for this job.
Qualified applicants will be considered without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, age, genetic information, disability, status as a protected veteran or political affiliation.
UNC Health makes reasonable accommodations for applicants' and employees' religious practices and beliefs, as well as applicants and employees with disabilities. All interested applicants are invited to apply for career opportunities. Please email applicant.accommodations@unchealth.unc.edu if you need a reasonable accommodation to search and/or to apply for a career opportunity.
Qualified applicants will be considered without regard to their race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, or status as a protected veteran.