Director, Clinical Applications

Weekly outpatient therapy isn't always enough, and a trip to the ER isn't the only answer. Patients and their families rely on Compass Health Center when in crisis – every day, we help people overcome depression, anxiety, suicidality, obsessions/compulsions, trauma, chronic pain, and other obstacles in order for our patients to live freely.

About This Role 

The Director, Clinical Applications leads the strategy, optimization, and day-to-day management of the organization’s EHR and other clinical applications. In this role, you’ll play an important part in ensuring technology works seamlessly for the people delivering care, partnering closely with clinical leaders and frontline teams to understand their needs and improve the systems they rely on every day.

You’ll lead efforts to optimize workflows, reduce unnecessary administrative work, and ensure clinical applications support safe, efficient, and compliant care. This includes overseeing application configuration, testing, upgrades, training, vendor management, and adoption, as well as evaluating AI-enabled capabilities that can enhance clinical documentation and workflows.

Our dedicated operations teams work behind the scenes to bring our shared mission to life. Each department delivers their own set of strengths which empower our clinicians to focus on their expertise, and ultimately perform the meaningful work that we do.

What You'll Do

Clinical Workflow & Application Optimization 

• Partner with clinical leaders and frontline users to understand how care is delivered across IOP, PHP, and outpatient behavioral health programs.
• Ensure EHR and other clinical application workflows support real-world clinical workflows, including intake, treatment planning, documentation, scheduling, utilization, and discharge.
• Identify system friction, workarounds, unnecessary steps, and documentation burden and develop practical improvements.
• Help distinguish between process problems and system problems before recommending changes.
• Balance user experience with clinical quality, compliance, reporting, billing, and operational needs.
• Use feedback and performance data to identify and prioritize improvements. 

Application Management & Delivery 

• Own the roadmap, configuration standards, priorities, and lifecycle management for the EHR and related clinical applications.
• Lead configuration, testing, upgrades, enhancements, and implementation of new functionality.
• Translate clinical and business needs into clear system requirements and configuration decisions.
• Create a clear process for application requests, priorities, and changes.
• Partner with Data, Security, Infrastructure, revenue cycle, and other teams when changes affect integrations, reporting, access, or downstream systems.
• Stay hands-on with complex or high-impact application work. 

Clinical Partnership, AI & Adoption 

• Serve as a trusted clinical technology partner to clinical, operational, quality, compliance, and executive leaders.
• Bring clinical and technical teams together to solve workflow and system problems.
• Partner with training resources to support onboarding, system changes, adoption, and ongoing education.
• Identify and evaluate AI-enabled capabilities that can reduce documentation burden, simplify workflows, or improve the quality of clinical information.
• Ensure AI-enabled workflows include appropriate clinical review, privacy, security, and operational safeguards. 

Vendor & Team Leadership 

• Manage clinical application vendor relationships, including support, escalations, product roadmaps, and optimization opportunities.
• Lead, develop, and set clear priorities for the clinical applications team.
• Set expectations for responsiveness, documentation, quality, testing, and partnership with users.
• Manage team capacity while remaining actively involved in the work. 

Who You Are

Required Qualifications 

• Bachelor’s degree in Health Informatics, Information Systems, Healthcare Administration, Nursing, a behavioral health or clinical discipline, or a related field; equivalent relevant experience may be considered.
• 5+ years of experience with EHR/EMR applications, clinical systems, healthcare technology, or related work.
• 3+ years of experience leading or managing clinical application, EHR, or healthcare technology professionals.
• Strong experience with clinical application configuration, optimization, implementation, and ongoing management.
• Demonstrated ability to understand clinical workflows and translate them into effective system workflows and requirements.
• Experience partnering directly with clinicians, operational leaders, and other healthcare stakeholders.
• Strong problem-solving, communication, prioritization, and stakeholder management skills.
• Understanding of healthcare privacy, security, regulatory, and documentation requirements. 

Preferred Qualifications 

• Experience in behavioral health, IOP, PHP, outpatient mental health, substance use treatment, or a similar clinical environment.
• Strong understanding of behavioral health workflows including intake, assessment, treatment planning, therapy, psychiatry, documentation, utilization management, and discharge.
• Experience optimizing an established EHR and related clinical applications.
• Experience with Sigmund AURA, or other behavioral health-focused clinical systems.
• Experience with clinical documentation improvement, system integrations, and AI-enabled clinical workflows. 

We know job descriptions can be intimidating, so if this sounds like an opportunity for you, please don't hesitate to apply! 

Who We Are 

Compass Health Center is a recognized leader in crisis-level mental health, bringing passion, connection, and patient-centered care to the Partial Hospitalization and Intensive Outpatient space (PHP/IOP). Based in Chicagoland, we serve hundreds of patients every day, ranging from ages 5 through adulthood, in our onsite facilities or through our flourishing virtual programming. Compass fills a critical gap between outpatient and inpatient care through an intermediate level of Behavioral Healthcare.  

A few more things we want you to know: our values are super important to us, and hopefully will be to you, too. Cultural humility, teamwork, continuous improvement, connection, patient centered care, passion, innovation, and agility should be your power sources. Joining Compass is an opportunity to feel fulfilled through a joint mission towards healing our communities. 

Benefits & Perks 

We know that you will be dedicated to your purpose here. We look at that investment as a two-way street. We are proud to offer plenty of space for growth, and opportunities to pursue continuous development within our organization. 

For eligible positions, our other benefits include: comprehensive medical/dental/vision plans, 401k program with company matching, generous PTO (including competitive parental leave after 1 year of employment), and continuous training through CEU seminars and volunteering opportunities.  

What’s Next? 

Compass is committed to cultivating diverse and dynamic teams who exude passion for their craft, so whether or not you check all the boxes, we encourage you to apply – we’d be grateful to hear from you!