Centralus Health Director Infection Prevention and Control

Centralus Health Mission

Our mission is to deliver high-quality care, empower our teams to succeed and improve the wellbeing of the communities we serve.

Job Summary

The Director of Infection Prevention & Control provides strategic leadership and system-wide oversight for infection prevention across all hospitals, ambulatory, and post-acute settings within Centralus Health. This role is responsible for ensuring regulatory compliance, advancing organizational readiness for accreditation and survey activities, and proactively aligning infection prevention with organizational brand, reputation, quality outcomes, and financial risk mitigation.

As a system-level role, the Director is expected to maintain a rotational on-site presence across all facilities under scope of responsibility, ensuring visibility, alignment, and engagement at the front line.

The Director will serve as a trusted advisor to executive and clinical leadership, working across disciplines to build sustainable systems, future-proof infection prevention strategies, and ensure integration with quality, risk, and patient safety initiatives. As part of Centralus Health's Integrated Quality Division, the Director is the accountable executive for mitigation efforts aimed at reducing overall risk to the organization, its patients and families, and the broader community based on the burden of disease.

This role requires cross-disciplinary alignment between Laboratory, Pharmacy, and critical clinical service lines to ensure a comprehensive approach to infection prevention and population health improvement efforts. By leveraging the antibiogram and epidemiologic insights, the Director ensures that organizational strategies address antimicrobial resistance, optimize stewardship, and reduce variation in care delivery while proactively anticipating emerging threats and exposures that pose risks to patients and staff.

Core Job Functions

• Co-create and operationalize strategic leadership and governance with the Associate Chief Quality Officer and Medical Directors, by developing and executing a system-wide infection prevention strategy that aligns with organizational goals, public health priorities, and Community Health Needs Assessment (CHNA) findings. Maintain rotational on-site presence across all hospitals, ambulatory, and post-acute sites to ensure alignment and accountability.*
• Advise executive and clinical leadership on emerging risks, evolving epidemiologic trends, and community disease burden, ensuring proactive mitigation of exposures that could impact patients, staff, and the community.*
• Lead governance structures that integrate infection prevention into Centralus Health's Integrated Quality Division, ensuring alignment with quality, patient safety, and enterprise risk management frameworks. Serve as the accountable executive for system-level infection prevention risk mitigation that acts proactively and autonomously.*
• Collaborate with Population Health, Public Health agencies, Laboratory, Pharmacy, and clinical service lines to ensure a comprehensive approach to infection prevention, antimicrobial stewardship, and population health improvement. Leverage the antibiogram and surveillance data to proactively address antimicrobial resistance and optimize stewardship practices.*
• Ensure regulatory and accreditation readiness by maintaining compliance with CMS Conditions of Participation, Joint Commission standards, NHSN requirements, and state/federal regulations. Provide executive oversight of system readiness for surveys, tracers, and audits, including unscheduled regulatory visits. The Director is accountable to all standards and will ensure proactive and ongoing compliance monitoring.*
• Oversee quality integration and outcomes, partnering with Quality, Risk, CDI, Clinical Data, and Patient Safety leaders to monitor, track, and report Healthcare-Associated Conditions (HACs). Ensure results are translated into evidence-based, system-level interventions that reduce variation, protect reimbursement under Value-Based Purchasing (VBP), and safeguard organizational reputation.*
• Direct team development and oversight, serving as mentor and leader to the Clinical Manager and Infection Preventionists across the system. Build capacity through succession planning, APIC-aligned competency development, and a culture of accountability and psychological safety.*
• Collaborate with Finance, Marketing/Communications, Sr. Director/Associate Chief Quality Officer, and Chief Medical Officer(s) to ensure that HAC performance and infection prevention outcomes are communicated transparently, with clear links to both brand and financial impact.*
• Partnering with Clinical Data, Clinical Education and Learning Management to integrate infection prevention standards into onboarding, annual competencies, and leadership training across all care settings.*
• Serve as the escalation authority for complex infection prevention issues, outbreak responses, or cross-disciplinary conflicts. Facilitate alignment across departments, ensuring timely, evidence-based solutions and translating lessons learned into sustainable organizational practice change.*
• Maintains oversight and co-ownership with relative operational leaders for accountability of service expectations and metrics for clinical contracts that directly impact subject matter.
• Promotes and facilitates research activities that contribute to evidence-based practice and continuous improvement in infection prevention and patient care
• Other duties as assigned.

Important Note: (*) indicates an essential function of the job as defined by the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). Essential functions are the core duties that are fundamental to the position and must be performed, with or without reasonable accommodation.

Success Factors

• Think systemically and act as a strategist - aligning infection prevention goals with enterprise-wide strategic priorities, population health initiatives, and community health needs assessments (CHNAs). You recognize that innovation is not simply operational improvement, but the design of integrated systems that reduce variation, anticipate risk, and strengthen brand reputation and resilience.
• Be a self-starter and bold in a professional manner - demonstrating initiative, courage, and confidence to raise issues, challenge assumptions, and advocate for evidence-based solutions, while maintaining professionalism and credibility with executives, providers, and regulators.
• Drive behavior change at scale - applying epidemiologic expertise and change management principles to influence patients, staff, providers, and community stakeholders. You maintain clarity in complexity and ambiguity, ensuring disciplined focus during outbreaks, regulatory shifts, or emerging public health threats.
• Exemplify mastery of infection prevention leadership - advancing beyond technical expertise to system-level strategy, policy influence, and innovation. You model APIC's higher-order competencies, while coaching Clinical Managers and Infection Preventionists to grow into leadership roles and advance the profession.
• Proactively adapt to emerging trends - demonstrating foresight in identifying and addressing epidemiologic patterns, antimicrobial resistance, and public health risks before they become crises. You position the organization to remain ahead of regulatory, environmental, and financial pressures.
• Steward regulatory and financial accountability - ensuring Centralus Health remains compliant with CMS, Joint Commission, NHSN, and state regulatory frameworks across acute, post-acute, and ambulatory care. You align infection prevention strategies with Value-Based Purchasing, HAC Reduction, and financial risk mitigation, ensuring quality outcomes and protecting organizational reputation.
• Develop and mentor future leaders - leading not only teams, but also leaders of teams (Clinical Manager, site leads). You create a culture of accountability, psychological safety, and high performance across the system, embedding succession planning and professional development into every initiative.
• Champion cross-disciplinary integration - forging strong partnerships across Laboratory, Pharmacy, Quality, Risk, Patient Safety, Population Health, and Public Health agencies. You ensure infection prevention strategies leverage the antibiogram, community surveillance data, and stratified performance metrics to drive system-wide alignment.
• Institutionalize sustainable change - translating lessons learned into policies, governance, and infrastructure that endure beyond episodic responses. You employ frameworks such as IHI's Action Hierarchy but extend them to system redesign and long-term risk mitigation, ensuring Centralus Health is "future-proofed" against exposures and evolving disease burden.

Education / Experience Qualifications

Required:

• Master's degree in Nursing, Epidemiology, Microbiology, Public Health, or related health sciences.
• Minimum 10 years in infection prevention, epidemiology, or quality leadership, with at least 5 years in a director-level/system leadership role.
• Certification in Infection Control (CIC®) required.
• Demonstrated success in leading infection prevention across multi-hospital systems and engaging with public health agencies.
• Demonstrated ability to design, facilitate, and sustain improvement teams across hospitals and clinics, ensuring alignment with system priorities and achievement of measurable performance goals.

Preferred:

• Doctorate degree in Epidemiology, Public Health, Nursing, or related healthcare discipline required. Master's in Nursing, Public Health, or Healthcare Administration preferred.
• Fellowship with APIC, SHEA, or CPH (Certified in Public Health).
• Proven ability to sustain optimal performance in employee engagement.
• Strong knowledge of NHSN reporting, EHR surveillance tools, and CMS/Joint Commission standards.
• Ability to translate data into clear strategies that improve outcomes, reduce burden, and enhance organizational readiness.
• Experience with NHSN, EHR surveillance tools (Epic Bugsy, Theradoc, etc.), and advanced Excel or data visualization platforms (Tableau, Power BI, Qlik).

Physical Requirements

• Must be able to remain at a workstation and move around the workspace as needed to complete job tasks, with or without reasonable accommodation.