Lead Consultant, Safety

Benefits ECRI is an inspiring place to work. We share a common mission to help healthcare organizations make smart, compassionate, and ethical decisions for patients. Consider these additional benefits of joining the ECRI team: Industry leadership: We have a long history and proven reputation in patient safety and medical technology research.

On-the-job-learning: You will have the opportunity to work with specialists across medical science, patient care, healthcare management, and technology. Comprehensive healthcare benefits: We offer medical, dental, vision, life insurance, accidental death and dismemberment, and disability coverage. Retirement Savings: Our employees can participate in an employer-matching 403(b) Retirement Savings Plan.

Additional benefits: ECRI offers additional benefits to our employees, including paid time off and holiday pay, paid leave for parents, tuition assistance, employee assistance program, access to LinkedIn Learning, and other voluntary benefit programs (e.g. accident insurance, identity theft insurance, flexible spending accounts). Volunteer Program: ECRI Cares, our employee volunteer program, provides a framework for us to work together and make a difference in the lives of others. All employees are provided 16 hours annually of paid time to volunteer at preapproved ECRI Cares charities during normal business hours.

About ECRI At ECRI, our passion for safe, effective, and efficient care is ingrained into the fabric of who we are and why we are here. For more than 50 years, the people of ECRI have been unyielding in their work to protect patients from unsafe and ineffective medical technologies and practices. Now, with the acquisition of the Institute for Safe Medication Practices (ISMP), we have created one of the largest healthcare quality and safety entities in the world.

As a non‑profit, independent organization, we utilize an unbiased, evidence‑based approach to develop guidance, and maintain our principles of integrity and transparent work. Our ethical standards have led us to adopt the industry's strictest conflict‑of‑interest policies, and they are why tens of thousands of healthcare leaders worldwide rely on ECRI to guide their clinical, operational, and strategic decisions across all sites of care. ECRI is the only organization worldwide to conduct independent medical device evaluations, with labs located in North America and Asia Pacific.

ECRI is designated an Evidence‑based Practice Center by the U.S. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality and a federally certified Patient Safety Organization by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

At ECRI, our passion for the truth drives us to go further and dig deeper in our pursuit to advance effective, evidence‑based healthcare globally. The success of our organization relies on the kind of creative thinking that can only result from a diverse team of individuals. ECRI is proud to be an employer of choice with an inclusive environment for all employees.

As part of this goal and in compliance with various laws and regulations, ECRI provides reasonable accommodation to applicants and employees. It’s what makes ECRI unique, and why we are the most trusted voice in healthcare. Position Summary The Lead Safety Consultant is responsible for understanding, innovating, and evaluating systems‑based improvement activities aimed to improve clinical outcomes and reduce preventable harm.

Working in support of Patient Safety Organization (PSO) and SafeSystem Solutions deliverables, the Advisor collaborates with internal and external teams to create and disseminate clinical and patient safety solutions for clients. The Advisor displays a proficient level of skill‑development with related activities. Essential Functions Reasonable Accommodation Statement: To accomplish this job successfully, an individual must be able to perform, with or without reasonable accommodation, each essential function satisfactorily.

Reasonable accommodations may be made to help enable qualified individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions. Essential Functions Statement(s): Clinical and Safety Improvement: Partner with clients on their journey to reduce preventable harm. This includes providing advisement and resources to PSO clients and performing consultative services for SafeSystem Solutions clients.

Utilize ECRI resources to consult with client stakeholders to respond to industry change, federal and state regulatory requirements and opportunities for improvement and growth in complex situations. Apply ECRI’s Healthcare is a System model to facilitate the successful implementation of clinical and operational safety improvement activities. Use a data‑driven approach to engage clients in performance improvement to achieve goals related to reducing preventable harm.

Leverage ECRI’s SafeSystem Solutions conceptual model to enable clients to build highly reliable and resilient clinical and operational safety systems that generate positive outcomes for patients, families and workforce. Support clients in implementing just culture principles to promote a fair and accountable culture. Apply ECRI’s improvement model of “Understand – Innovate – Evaluate” when working on performance improvement projects.

Perform causal analysis and feedback to clients with support from senior Clinical Improvement Safety Advisors. Support clients using proactive, reactive, and common cause approaches to error evaluation and analysis. Participate as faculty in causal analysis training programs.

Apply principles of human factors engineering to clinical and operational safety improvement activities. Facilitate safe table events to promote best practice sharing. Support proposal submission to disseminate ECRI and client safety and quality outcomes through speaking engagements, white papers, and journal articles.

Culture of Safety: Support clients to use the culture of safety assessment results to create action plans to improve organizational safety culture. Assist clients to address culture of safety implications associated with operational changes (e.g., staffing shortages). Recommend feedback techniques for informing stakeholders, providers, and frontline staff about unsafe conditions, near misses, and incidents.

Data Analysis and Visualization: Independently complete data analysis and reports using various data sets including patient safety event data, safety culture survey data, causal analysis data, etc. Use advanced data visualization techniques to provide event feedback to clients (e.g., complex multi‑content charts/graphs). Analyze patient safety event data to identify trends, patterns, and emerging risks.

Utilize data analysis and visualization tools such as Power BI and Excel to interpret complex datasets and communicate findings effectively. Apply Natural Language Processing (NLP) techniques to extract insights from unstructured narrative data within event reports. Develop taxonomy and identify trends within moderate to complex data samples.

Synthesize findings from root cause analysis (RCA) data to develop targeted mitigation strategies. Interpret culture of safety survey data to guide organizational improvement efforts. Enterprise Safety Management Support: Champion the adoption and integration of ECRI’s Enterprise Safety Management (ESM) framework within partner healthcare organizations.

Guide healthcare teams in applying ESM principles to build a proactive and comprehensive safety culture. This includes providing advisement and resources to PSO clients and performing consultative services for SafeSystem Solutions clients. Safety Event Reporting: Maximize the event reporting process to allow team members from across the organization to identify safety events, near misses, and unsafe conditions across healthcare settings, promoting transparent organizational learning and nurturing a culture that prioritizes safety.

Peer Support for Team Members: Nurture an environment that emphasizes peer support as part of its broader culture of patient safety and just culture, encouraging all employees to be resilient and mutually supportive before, during, and after stressful events. Communication, Apology, Review, and Resolution with Patients and Families: Create an environment in which all healthcare providers are encouraged to take an empathetic and compassionate approach to communicating and disclosing information when a patient experiences an unanticipated outcome. Root Cause Analysis of Harm Events and Near Misses: Redesign the RCA2 process into a powerful learning tool that takes a systems‑based approach to identifying contributing and causal factors that lead to adverse events and near misses.

Develop reliable and high‑impact action plans that lead to sustainable and measurable improvement. Great Catch Reporting and Recognition: Develop an action‑oriented learning system that uses recognition as an incentive to encourage team members to report risks that could potentially cause harm. Patient‑Reported Safety Concerns: Reporting, Response, and Action: Engage patients, families, and caregivers as partners in safety by leveraging commonly reported sources of information to evaluate potential and actual risks that patients perceive as harmful.

Tiered Safety Huddles: Create an enterprise‑wide rapid communication and response forum for frontline personnel, managers, leaders, and senior executives to share safety concerns, learn the status of operations, assign ownership for resolution, develop plans, and ensure common understanding of priorities. Client Support and Project Management: Serve as the direct point of contact with the client and quickly establish credibility for the respective project work stream by proactively building strategic working relationships. Demonstrate advanced project management skills and successfully complete complex projects.

Proactively reach out to clients, including executive level staff, and facilitate engaging client meetings. Responsibilities, include, but not limited to, material design and presentation, participant engagement, and coordination of logistical support. Identify and manage client deliverables, as outlined in the client contract, including performing quality control on deliverables before dissemination.

Manage aspects of client user access, onboarding, and disenrollment. Collaborate with support teams (e.g., sales, marketing, and IT) to create and implement client support strategies. Provide feedback on technical updates, including dashboards and new deliverables.

Lead projects and deliverables, as assigned by functional teams. Demonstrate critical thinking in all aspects of work. Additional Responsibilities Other duties, as assigned.

Accountability Metric(s) N/A Qualifications Experience: 5+ years of previous work experience in healthcare safety, quality or risk management. Prior consulting experience strongly preferred. Past experience in training and coaching patient‑facing teams.

Demonstrated experience in driving performance improvement initiatives. Requires strong data analytic skills (Excel, Access, SQL, SAS, etc.). Experience with Power BI.

Advanced skills in MS Office Products (Word, PPT, Excel) to support document preparation. Ability to work under pressure to meet deadlines and to quickly adapt to multiple priorities. Experience working with Natural Language Processing (NLP) tools and techniques is preferred.

Education: Master’s Degree in nursing or other health‑related subject is required. Additional Areas of Competency that are desirable: Provision of care: utilize knowledge of risks associated with delivery, transitions, and coordination of patient care to facilitate improvement of provider safety processes. Professional and Legal Responsibility: understanding of practice standards set forth by professional organizations, ethical principles, regulations, and laws, including the Patient Safety Quality Improvement Act 0f 2005.

Evidence‑Based Practice and Research: use evidence and research to support client education and engagement in patient safety improvement practices. Person‑Family Centered Focus: support clients to implement strategies to improve the patient care experience through culture of safety principles. Population‑Based Care and Health Equity: support clients to improve the culture of safety through integration of health equity and population health principles.

Health Information Technology Support and Safety: engage clients in the use of health information technology (HIT) to enhance patient safety through clinical decision support and process improvement. Computer Skills N/A Certifications & Licenses N/A Position Compensation The salary range for new employees in this position is $92,903 - $113,806 based on background, experience, and skills. In addition, new employees in this position are eligible for all of our benefit offerings, including, but not limited to, health and welfare benefits, 403(B) retirement savings, and paid time off (PTO).

Physical Demands This position operates in a remote environment and requires the individual to remain in a stationary position, whether sitting or standing, before a desk or other fixed workspace, most of their workday. In addition, this position requires the individual to occasionally move about their workspace to access and inspect work‑related materials, such as file cabinets with physical files and standard office equipment. This position requires the ability to operate standard office equipment, including, but not limited to, a laptop, keyboard, mouse, webcam, and phone, as well as effectively communicate information and ideas to a wide variety of audiences in written and oral form.

ADA Statement ECRI is committed to equal employment opportunities and compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). ECRI values diversity and inclusivity, and we strive to provide a work environment that accommodates employees with disabilities. If you require reasonable accommodations to participate in the application or interview process, please inform us so that we can provide the necessary support.

ECRI believes that everyone should have an equal opportunity to contribute their skills and talents, and we are dedicated to making our workplace accessible and inclusive for all. EEO Statement ECRI is committed to providing equal employment opportunities (EEO) to all employees and applicants for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability, genetics, sexual orientation, gender identity, or veteran status. We value diversity and believe that a diverse workforce enhances our ability to succeed.

ECRI complies with applicable federal, state, and local laws governing nondiscrimination in employment and prohibits any form of discrimination or harassment based on these protected characteristics. #J-18808-Ljbffr