Chief of Surgery

Chief of Surgery

The Healthcare Initiative has been retained by Bayhealth, south central Delaware’s leader in healthcare, to lead the recruitment of Chief of Surgery for their healthsystem. This skilled clinical leader will be a transformative, dynamic and collaborative clinician instrumental in helping to shape and implement the future vision and strategy of Bayhealth’s surgical services program.

Bayhealth is a progressive two hospital healthcare delivery system committed to the highest quality of care and services with over 200 employed physicians and advanced practice providers and growing, and a total over 500 providers in the network. Bayhealth is a Leapfrog A rated system, with a Gold Seal of approval from the Joint Commission, a Commission on Cancer accredited program, and has Magnet Recognition for nursing.

This is an exciting time to be joining Bayhealth in this new opportunity which is a result of Bayhealth’s success in growth and their transformative journey. The Chief of Surgery will be the physician leader responsible for supervising all clinical and strategic aspects of the surgery programs at Bayhealth’s northern and southern campuses, the latter which is a state-of-the-art facility that was completed in 2019 with their own capital and is shelled out to accommodate 400 beds (currently about 176 beds and expanding). The flagship in Dover has 300 beds and is building out an additional tower to accommodate the growth as they continue their journey to Level II Trauma designation.

This leader will be charged with leading all activities related to the ORs, to include collaboration with graduate medical education and research. The Chief of Surgery will assist in developing and advancing the strategic vision for surgical services by partnering with the anesthesia and nursing heads, Medical Group leadership, hospital leadership, Service Line administrative leaders, medical staff leadership and community physicians, so that all parties would work together as appropriate to insure the growth and quality of the surgical services. This also includes assisting with recruitment, supporting our clinical education research capabilities, managing outcome scorecards and continuing to improve patient outcomes.

Bayhealth was recognized in September 2020 by Becker’s as one of the top seven health systems in the country that has strong financial performance with a “AA” rating and stable outlook with Fitch (credit rating agency) and continues to maintain that status with a stable outlook for the future. The system, which includes two hospital campuses, has ample liquidity, strong operating results, light leverage and is the market leader in its service area according to Fitch. The credit rating agency expects Bayhealth to sustain strong operating margins and maintain health liquidity. This is a remarkable feat, yet for years they’ve maintained this strong financial performance with the strong/stable/progressive leadership team they have in place. It’s also recognized for it’s strong culture of service with outstanding employees. They boast of never having had a layoff and have no plans to do so in the future.

The current employed medical staff employs approximately 450 providers, of which about 200 are physicians and others are advanced practice providers. They are growing rapidly through acquisition and bringing new physicians to the community, focusing on primary care, GI, cardiovascular, and OB-GYN in the short term. They launched their first cohort of family practice and internal medicine residency programs in July 2021. In 2022 they launched a general surgical residency program, and in 2023 began offering emergency medicine residency. In addition, they have fellowships in Gastroenterology, as well as Hematology and Medical Oncology. They participate in a statewide ACO where they are doing bundled payments and value-based contracts managing all the state employees as it pertains to total cost of care. Initiatives in the medical group will include expanding telemedicine services, optimizing scheduling, EPIC workflows, and getting productivity up for providers for greater access to care.

The culture in the organization is professional with collaborative, friendly people. They believe in being kind and caring in every encounter; everyone is responsible for their words, actions, and results; value everyone and treat people with dignity and professionalism; and that they can achieve more when everyone collaborates and works together. It is a critical expectation that the successful candidate will model these core values and behaviors while holding others accountable to the mission/vision/values of Bayhealth.

Bayhealth Medical Group is seeking a proven collaborative, innovative leader with initiative and excellent communication skills that can be counted on to be heavily involved in the day-to-day leadership of the medical group as a visible and inspiring leader of change. The providers are solid clinicians with great ideas, vision and desire. They are seeking support to provide operational structure and continued communications on health system and clinical initiatives that impact the quality of patient care delivery and outcomes and how they can contribute toward continuous improvement on population health. The practice staff are equally committed to providing excellent patient care, access, and streamlining efficiencies to enhance the patient and employee experience.

The successful candidate will be a highly visible, collaborative team player and connector, building relationships with internal and external stakeholders. With strong trusting, collaborative relationships the successful candidate will be able to coach and mentor providers across multiple disciplines. A strong business acumen with attention to details and dashboards, ability to work with service lines on new program development opportunities will gain credibility with surgeons and staff in leading the teams to continue advancing high levels of productivity, patient engagement/satisfaction,, and performance. Setting clear expectations and standards for productivity, work performance, clinical quality outcomes, will be essential in ensuring quality, patient centered care, especially during the onboarding process of new providers. Being digitally savvy and technology oriented with strong data analytics, fluency in working with EPIC electronic health records, and visual presentation skills coupled with high emotional intelligence are considered basic skills for this role in addition to excellent clinical skills and expertise.

In this role, the successful candidate will interact with providers in both the hospital and ambulatory settings, as well as work in a strong relationship with the administrative operational leader over the ambulatory group, the administrative leader over the service lines, as well as Bayhealth senior leadership team. The providers want to participate in a collaborative way toward the execution of the Bayhealth Strategic Plan by being heard and validated on their ideas and contributions for implementation.