Description

University of Utah Health seeks a Chief Administrative Officer, Neuroscience Care Line
Click here to view position profile: https://summitsearchsolutions.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/UHealth_Neuroscience_CAO_Profile.pdf
Location: Salt Lake City, Utah 

The Position:
The Chief Administrative Ocer (CAO), Neuroscience Care Line, is the senior administrative executive responsible for advancing and integrating the operational, nancial, and business performance of neuroscience services across University of Utah Health and partner organizations. The Neuroscience Care Line is responsible for the full spectrum of neurosciences including: 

• Neurology (general neurology, vascular neurology/stroke, epilepsy, neuromuscular, movement disorders, neuro-oncology, headache and pain, neuroimmunology).
• Neurosurgery (cranial, functional/stereotactic, neuro-oncologic, skull base, pediatric neurosurgery). Excludes Spine Care Line.
• Neurointerventional/endovascular neurosurgery (acute stroke intervention, aneurysm coiling, AVM/AVF embolization, carotid stenting).
• Neuroscience support services (comprehensive stroke center, neuro ICU, epilepsy monitoring unit, neurodiagnostics (EEG/EMG/IOM), neuro-rehabilitation, stereotactic radiosurgery). 

This role ensures alignment between Care Line strategy and administrative operations, supports high-value care delivery, and drives sustainable growth, operational excellence, and nancial stewardship across the continuum of care. As a partner on the three-person Care Line Executive Leadership Team (ELT), alongside the Executive Nursing Director and Chief Medical Ocer, this leader coordinates neuroscience services across the enterprise and provides leadership for strategic growth, operational strategy, innovation, quality and safety initiatives, academic integration, and nancial performance while fostering high reliability and collaboration. This position provides leadership and oversight for direct reports, operational resources, and nancial organizations supporting the Neuroscience Care Line. The role reports to the Care Line Clinical Board, with functional reporting to the System Associate Chief Operating Ocer, and co-leads the Care Line Executive Operations Committee (CLEOC) to achieve Care Line goals and outcomes.

Responsibilities:
Strategic Leadership and Growth

• Co-develop and lead the Neuroscience Care Line's multi-year strategy, goals, and operating plan in partnership with the Executive Leadership Team.
• Translate Care Line and system strategy into aligned priorities and clear direction across departments, sites, and partner organizations.
• Identify, evaluate, and advance growth opportunities through market assessment, program development, business planning, and strategic partnerships.
• Lead eorts to expand access, optimize care delivery, enhance patient experience, and improve value across the care continuum.
• Establish, monitor, and communicate key operational, nancial, quality, and experience metrics to support performance and strategic decision-making. 

Strategic Operational Integration

• Provide administrative leadership that aligns strategic priorities with operational execution across the Neuroscience Care Line.
• Establish governance processes, communication structures, and operational forums that promote alignment, accountability, and informed decision-making.
• Direct and support the Care Line Executive Operations Committee in translating strategic initiatives into actionable work plans and measurable outcomes.
• Facilitate two-way communication and feedback mechanisms that ensure operational and frontline perspectives inform Care Line priorities and decisions.
• Monitor organizational performance and adjust strategies, initiatives, and resource allocation based on operational, nancial, and quality outcomes. 

Quality, Safety, and Patient Advocacy

• Promote a culture of high reliability, safety, transparency, accountability, and continuous improvement across the Care Line.
• Ensure patient and family perspectives are considered in Care Line planning, service design, and operational decision-making.
• Partner with Executive Leadership Team members to establish and achieve quality, safety, patient experience, and operational objectives.
• Dene, monitor, and improve performance measures that support organizational goals, regulatory requirements, and professional standards.
• Support initiatives that improve clinical quality, operational eectiveness, patient outcomes, and organizational performance. 

Collaboration and Stakeholder Engagement

• Serve as a visible and trusted executive leader, modeling shared leadership and advancing the Care Line's mission, vision, and strategic priorities.
• Align physician, nursing, operational, academic, and administrative leaders around shared objectives and coordinated execution.
• Foster collaboration across hospitals, clinics, academic departments, institutes, and partner organizations to support integrated care delivery.
• Build and maintain productive relationships with internal and external stakeholders, establishing trust and alignment in support of Care Line objectives.
• Communicate priorities, progress, challenges, and opportunities eectively to executive leadership, governance bodies, and operational teams.

Financial and Operational Stewardship

• Provide executive oversight of Care Line nancial performance, including budgeting, forecasting, capital planning, resource allocation, and operational eciency.
• Develop business cases and strategic investment recommendations that support growth, innovation, and organizational priorities.
• Monitor nancial and operational performance indicators and implement strategies to improve performance and achieve established goals.
• Ensure responsible stewardship of organizational resources while balancing quality, access, growth, and nancial sustainability.
• Partner with nance, operational, and clinical leaders to support data-informed decision-making and performance improvement initiatives. 

Leadership and Workforce Development

• Model leadership that promotes innovation, accountability, engagement, and professional excellence.
• Foster an environment where leaders and teams are informed, empowered, and connected to Care Line priorities and objectives.
• Develop organizational capabilities that support current and future Care Line needs.
• Build credibility and alignment with key stakeholders to ensure the Care Line's integral role in advancing organizational strategy.
• Support succession planning, leadership development, and workforce engagement initiatives across the Care Line. 

Qualifications:
Knowledge/Skills/Abilities

• Demonstrated success leading complex, multi-site healthcare operations through partnership, inuence, collaboration, and disciplined execution.
• Deep operational and nancial expertise, including budgeting, capital planning, resource management, growth strategy, performance improvement, and operational optimization.
• Strong strategic and systems-thinking capabilities with the ability to develop and execute long-term plans across highly matrixed organizations.
• Proven ability to use metrics, dashboards, governance structures, and performance management methodologies to improve operational, nancial, and quality outcomes.
• Demonstrated ability to lead large-scale organizational initiatives involving multiple stakeholders, competing priorities, and complex operational environments.
• Executive presence with exceptional communication, relationship-building, negotiation, and change leadership skills.
• Ability to build trust and alignment among clinical, academic, operational, and administrative leaders within a complex academic health system.
• Demonstrated commitment to patient-centered care, organizational excellence, and continuous improvement. 

Required Qualifications

• Master's degree in Healthcare Administration, Business Administration, Public Health, Healthcare Management, or a related eld.
• Five to seven years of progressive healthcare leadership experience with demonstrated responsibility for operational, nancial, and strategic performance.
• Experience leading complex healthcare operations, service lines, institutes, or major programs within an academic medical center, integrated health system, or similarly complex healthcare environment.
• Demonstrated experience developing and implementing strategic initiatives that improve organizational performance, access, growth, quality, or operational eectiveness. 

Preferred Experience

• Ten or more years of progressive healthcare leadership experience.
• Experience with service line administration, academic healthcare operations, or enterprise-wide strategic initiatives.
• Experience overseeing signicant budgets, capital planning activities, and complex organizational change initiatives.
• Experience working within matrixed organizations requiring inuence across multiple stakeholders and reporting relationships. 

Why Consider the Opportunity:

• Shape the Model: Define how strategy, operations, and business performance come together within one of U of U Health’s emerging Care Lines and the evolution of integrated care across the system.
• Drive Strategic Growth: Identify and advance opportunities to expand access, develop programs, strengthen partnerships, and extend the reach and impact of neuroscience care.
• Lead Across Boundaries: Exercise executive leadership across departments, programs, sites, and partner organizations, aligning clinical, nursing, operational, and academic leaders around shared priorities and coordinated execution.
• Advance Operational Excellence: Translate strategy into measurable performance by optimizing operations, capacity, resources, and care delivery across a complex neuroscience enterprise.
• Steward for the Future: Guide financial performance, resource allocation, business planning, and strategic investment to balance growth and innovation with long-term sustainability.
• Join a Transformative Movement: Bring an enterprise and business perspective to the future of neuroscience care as U of U Health builds a more integrated, accountable, and high-performing model of care. 

A New Model for Integrative Care:
University of Utah Health is advancing a Care Line model designed to organize care around the needs and experience of patients across the full continuum of care rather than around individual departments, sites, or disciplines. The model brings together physician, nursing, and administrative leadership to create stronger alignment across clinical programs and care settings, reduce fragmentation, improve access and coordination, and create a more consistent patient experience.  

Each Care Line is led by a three-person executive leadership team consisting of a Chief Medical Officer, Executive Nursing Director, and Chief Administrative Officer. Together, these leaders are responsible for integrating clinical, operational, nursing, financial, quality, academic, and growth priorities across a highly matrixed organization. They work through existing clinical departments, hospitals, practices, institutes, and administrative structures rather than replacing them, making influence, partnership, shared accountability, and enterprise thinking essential to success.  

U of U Health began implementation of the model with its Solid Organ Transplant Care Line, naming Josef Stehlik, MD, MPH, as its Chief Medical Officer and Executive Director in 2026 following a national search. The health system described this Care Line as the first of several being developed to create a more integrated, patient-centered model of care.

The Neuroscience Care Line represents an opportunity to help shape this model at an important stage in its development. Its leaders will have the opportunity not simply to administer an existing structure, but to help define how an integrated Care Line should operate, grow, and create value for patients, clinicians, and U of U Health.  

The Neuroscience Care Line
The Neuroscience Care Line will bring together an unusually broad and complex continuum of highly specialized neurological and neurosurgical care, spanning neurology; neurosurgery; neurointerventional and endovascular care and critical neuroscience support services. Its scope includes such areas as stroke and vascular neurology, epilepsy, movement disorders, neuromuscular disease, neuro-oncology, neuroimmunology, cranial and functional neurosurgery, neurocritical care, neurodiagnostics, neurorehabilitation, and stereotactic radiosurgery, among others. The Care Line extends across inpatient, outpatient, procedural, diagnostic, rehabilitative, and other settings of care.

The opportunity extends well beyond coordinating existing programs. The Neuroscience Care Line provides a framework for U of U Health to connect expertise and resources that currently span multiple departments, sites, and organizational structures; strengthen the patient journey across the continuum; establish shared priorities and measures of performance; expand access; advance quality and clinical innovation; and identify opportunities for strategic growth. Its leaders will need to bring people together across a highly matrixed academic health system while respecting the important roles of department chairs, division chiefs, nursing leadership, operational leaders, faculty, and other existing structures. For the neuroscience leadership team, the mandate is larger than overseeing individual programs; it is to position neuroscience as an increasingly integrated, distinctive, and high-impact enterprise within U of U Health and across the Mountain West.  

About University of Utah Health:
University of Utah Health (U of U Health) is Utah’s only academic health care system and a major health care, research, and education resource for the Mountain West with an annual budget of $7 billion. Its referral area encompasses approximately 10 percent of the United States, including Utah, Idaho, Wyoming, Montana, western Colorado, and much of Nevada. Its integrated enterprise includes 5 hospitals, 12 community health care centers, the University of Utah Medical Group, U of U Health Plan, ARUP Laboratories, and numerous nationally recognized institutes and centers. More than 27,000 employees support this broad mission. 

U of U Health combines the reach and complexity of a major health system with the academic mission of a leading research university. It provides care across more than 200 specialties, trains the majority of Utah’s physicians and thousands of other health care professionals, and supports a health sciences research enterprise that reached $531 million in funding in FY2025. In 2026, U of U Health was again recognized by Vizient as a top-preforming comprehensive academic medical center, continuing a 17-year record of top performance.  

The University of Utah Health is led by Bob S. Carter, MD, PhD, Executive Vice President for Health Sciences and CEO of U of U Health. An internationally recognized neurosurgeon-scientist and health care executive, Dr. Carter joined the University of Utah in 2025 following leadership roles at Mass General Brigham and Harvard Medical School. Under his leadership, U of U Health is advancing an ambitious vision of its next era; building on the organization’s strengths in clinical care, research, education, and community impact while creating the structures and capacities necessary for sustainable growth.

U of U Health is in a period of significant growth and evolution. Investments in new facilities, expanded regional access, clinical integration, research, technology, and new models of care are extending its reach throughout Utah and the Mountain West. Among those changes is the development of a Care Line model designed to bring greater coordination and accountability to care across traditional organizational boundaries, strengthening patient experience, access, growth, and operational performance.   

To Apply:
The qualifications outlined in this profile are intended to reflect the breadth and complexity of the role and the experience that may prepare the candidate for success. U of U Health recognizes that candidates may bring different combinations of clinical, leadership, strategic, and organizational experience. Candidates are encouraged to highlight the experiences and strengths they would bring to the role.  

Review of applications will begin immediately and continue until the position is filled. Applications received by November 17, 2026, will receive first consideration. Candidates should submit a CV/resume and a brief one-page statement of interest. All applications and nominations will be held in confidence. 

To apply online: https://theapplicantmanager.com/jobs?pos=su532  

For more information or to offer recommendations or nominations:
Karen Pedersen, Ph.D.
Senior Consultant
Summit Search Solutions, Inc.
Direct: 719-747-2545
kpedersen@summitsearchsolutions.com  

University of Utah Health Hospitals and Clinics, a part of The University of Utah, values candidates who have experience working in settings with students and patients from all backgrounds and possess a strong commitment to improving access to higher education and quality healthcare for historically underrepresented students and patient populations.

All qualified individuals are encouraged to apply. Veterans’ preference is extended to qualified applicants, upon request and consistent with University policy and Utah state law. Upon request, reasonable accommodations in the application process will be provided to individuals with disabilities. 

University of Utah Health Hospitals and Clinics, a part of The University of Utah, is an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity employer and does not discriminate based upon race, ethnicity, color, religion, national origin, age, disability, sex, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, gender expression, pregnancy, pregnancy-related conditions, genetic information, or protected veteran's status. The University does not discriminate on the basis of sex in the education program or activity that it operates, as required by Title IX and 34 CFR part 106. The requirement not to discriminate in education programs or activities extends to admission and employment. Inquiries about the application of Title IX and its regulations may be referred to the Title IX Coordinator, to the Department of Education, Office for Civil Rights, or both. To request a reasonable accommodation for a disability, please contact the University of Utah Health Hospitals and Clinics Human Resources office at 801-581-6500. If you or someone you know has experienced discrimination or sexual misconduct including sexual harassment, you may contact the Director/Title IX Coordinator in the Office of Equal Opportunity (OEO). More information, including the Director/Title IX Coordinator's office address, electronic mail address, and telephone number can be located at: www.utah.edu/nondiscrimination/. Online reports may be submitted at oeo.utah.edu/. 

The University is a participating employer with Utah Retirement Systems (“URS”). Eligible new hires with prior URS service may elect to enroll in URS if they make the election before they become eligible for retirement (usually the first day of work). Contact Hospitals and Clinics Human Resources at (801) 581-6500 for information. Individuals who previously retired and receive monthly retirement benefits from URS are subject to URS’ post-retirement rules and restrictions. Please contact Utah Retirement Systems at (801) 366-7770 or (800) 695-4877 or Hospitals and Clinics Human Resources at (801) 581-6500 if you have questions regarding the post-retirement rules.  

This position may require the successful completion of a criminal background check and/or drug screen.