Job Overview
The Surgical Operations Manager is responsible for the day-to-day leadership, performance, safety, and regulatory readiness of the surgical department. As the practice expands from two operating rooms and five surgeons to three operating rooms and six surgeons, this role will be responsible for building the operational structure necessary to support continued growth while maintaining exceptional patient care, team performance, efficiency, and compliance.
This position serves as the primary operational leader for the operating room, PACU, and surgical support team and is accountable for ensuring that surgical operations are safe, efficient, organized, appropriately staffed, and survey-ready.
This leader will progressively assume primary ownership of facility accreditation readiness and ongoing compliance, including QUAD A requirements, required documentation, staff education, drills, audits, QAPI activities, and regulatory preparedness. Clinical Strategy Leadership will serve as a resource and consultant for complex regulatory matters, organizational initiatives, and readiness validation; however, the OR Manager is expected to develop the knowledge and systems necessary to independently maintain day-to-day compliance.
Success in this role includes safe and efficient OR operations, strong team performance and development, continuous accreditation readiness, effective resource utilization, productive surgeon and anesthesia relationships, and the development of scalable systems capable of supporting continued practice growth.
Qualifications
- Registered Nurse with active and unrestricted licensure.
- Previous perioperative nursing experience required.
- Prior OR leadership, charge nurse, clinical management, or surgical operations experience strongly preferred.
- Experience in ambulatory surgery, office-based surgery, plastic surgery, or procedural healthcare preferred.
- Experience with QUAD A, AAAHC, Joint Commission, CMS, or another healthcare accreditation program strongly preferred.
- Knowledge of perioperative patient safety, infection prevention, sterile processing, medication management, emergency preparedness, and regulatory compliance.
- Demonstrated ability to lead teams, manage competing priorities, solve operational problems, and hold others accountable.
- Strong organizational, communication, and critical-thinking skills.
- Ability to operate independently while recognizing when escalation or collaboration is appropriate.
Surgical Operations & OR Performance
- Direct daily operations of the surgical department, including operating rooms, pre-operative care, PACU, sterile processing, and surgical support functions.
- Maintain overall awareness and accountability for each surgical day's readiness, including staffing, equipment, instruments, medications, supplies, patient preparedness, and room assignments.
- Coordinate surgical flow across three operating rooms and multiple surgeons while anticipating operational needs before they affect patient care or productivity.
- Monitor surgical schedules and identify opportunities to improve utilization, case sequencing, staffing efficiency, room turnover, and overall surgical capacity.
- Partner with scheduling teams to build surgical days that maximize available OR time while maintaining safe and realistic workflows.
- Identify recurring causes of delays, cancellations, extended turnover times, staffing inefficiencies, and workflow breakdowns and develop sustainable solutions.
- Establish consistent expectations for room setup, turnover, closing procedures, daily assignments, and surgical workflows.
- Ensure effective communication and handoffs between scheduling, clinic, pre-operative nursing, OR staff, anesthesia, PACU, surgeons, and leadership.
- Anticipate operational needs associated with additional surgeons, increased case volume, new procedures, and continued facility growth.
- Serve as the primary point of escalation for day-to-day surgical operational concerns.
Team Leadership & Development
- Provide direct leadership and accountability for nursing staff, surgical technologists, sterile processing personnel, and other assigned surgical staff.
- Manage day-to-day staffing, team schedules, PTO requests, call-outs, coverage needs, and staff assignments to ensure appropriate support for surgical volume.
- Establish clear roles, responsibilities, assignments, and performance expectations for the surgical team.
- Participate in recruitment, interviewing, hiring, onboarding, orientation, competency validation, coaching, and performance management.
- Ensure new team members receive structured orientation and demonstrate competency before independently performing assigned responsibilities.
- Conduct ongoing staff education and reinforce expectations related to patient safety, sterile technique, documentation, professionalism, teamwork, emergency response, and regulatory compliance.
- Provide timely coaching when performance concerns arise and develop corrective or improvement plans when appropriate.
- Develop staff members capable of functioning across multiple areas of the surgical department to increase departmental flexibility and resilience.
- Promote a culture in which team members identify problems, communicate concerns early, take ownership of their responsibilities, and participate in improving the department.
- Encourage leadership development within the surgical team and identify individuals capable of assuming additional responsibilities as the practice grows.
Accreditation, Regulatory Compliance & Survey Readiness
- Serve as the operational owner of ongoing QUAD A accreditation readiness for the surgical facility.
- Develop a working knowledge of applicable QUAD A standards and ensure that regulatory requirements are incorporated into daily surgical operations.
- Maintain the facility in a state of continuous survey readiness rather than relying on periodic preparation immediately before an inspection.
- Coordinate preparation for accreditation surveys and participate as a primary facility representative during survey activity with the assistance of Clinical Strategy Lead.
- Maintain and oversee required compliance documentation, including but not limited to:
- OR and procedure logs
- Medication and controlled medication documentation
- Crash cart checks
- Malignant hyperthermia cart checks
- Emergency equipment inspections
- Sterilization and biological monitoring records
- Bowie-Dick testing where applicable
- Temperature and humidity monitoring
- Medication refrigerator monitoring
- Equipment maintenance records
- Infection prevention documentation
- Emergency drill documentation
- Staff competencies and required clinical education
- Conduct routine internal audits to identify documentation deficiencies or regulatory risk before they become survey findings.
- Ensure identified deficiencies are corrected and that corrective actions remain effective.
- Coordinate required staff drills, including malignant hyperthermia, cardiac arrest, anaphylaxis, fire, evacuation, emergency transfer, and other applicable scenarios.
- Ensure staff members understand their responsibilities during emergencies and regulatory surveys.
- Assist with policy implementation and identify when operational policies require clarification or revision.
- Communicate significant regulatory concerns or areas requiring interpretation to Clinical Strategy Leadership and collaborate on corrective action when appropriate.
- Assume increasing independence in accreditation management with the goal of maintaining routine facility compliance without requiring ongoing day-to-day oversight from corporate leadership.
Quality, Patient Safety & Risk Management
- Promote a surgical environment in which patient safety is prioritized in every operational and clinical decision.
- Ensure consistent adherence to patient identification, surgical time-out, specimen management, counts, medication safety, handoff, discharge, and documentation requirements.
- Monitor compliance with infection prevention practices, sterile technique, environmental standards, and surgical asepsis.
- Review patient safety events, near misses, medication errors, documentation concerns, and operational incidents within the surgical department.
- Participate in root-cause analysis and corrective action planning when appropriate.
- Identify trends that may represent opportunities for quality improvement.
- Participate in and support the facility's Quality Assessment and Performance Improvement (QAPI) program.
- Develop meaningful quality improvement initiatives based on operational data, patient outcomes, safety trends, workflow concerns, or regulatory findings.
- Ensure improvement efforts result in measurable change rather than documentation alone.
- Maintain readiness for emergency response, including malignant hyperthermia, cardiac arrest, anaphylaxis, hemorrhage, difficult airway, emergency transfer, fire, and other high-risk events.
- Ensure emergency equipment, medications, processes, and staff competencies remain appropriate for the procedures performed within the facility.
Inventory, Equipment & Surgical Resources
- Provide leadership and oversight to the Inventory Lead, ensuring appropriate systems are in place for ordering, par levels, receiving, stocking, expiration monitoring, and supply readiness.
- Partner with the Inventory Lead to ensure surgical supplies, medications, instrumentation, implants, and equipment are available for scheduled procedures.
- Review and support appropriate par levels based on surgical volume, surgeon needs, procedural changes, lead times, and historical utilization.
- Assist with vendor relationships, product availability concerns, backorders, substitutions, allocation issues, and other supply chain disruptions that may impact surgical operations.
- Ensure potential shortages or backorders are identified early and that clinically appropriate alternatives or contingency plans are developed.
- Support the onboarding of new surgeons and procedures by coordinating with the Inventory Lead to identify required instruments, supplies, equipment, implants, and vendor support.
- Oversee the development and maintenance of accurate surgeon preference cards and standardized surgical setups.
- Identify opportunities to reduce unnecessary product variation, waste, expired inventory, and avoidable supply expense while maintaining patient safety and surgeon needs.
- Ensure appropriate processes are in place for equipment inspection, preventive maintenance, repairs, service coordination, and replacement planning.
- Partner with the Inventory Lead and organizational leadership to identify equipment and capital needs and provide clinical and operational input regarding purchasing decisions.
- Maintain productive relationships with vendors and product representatives and serve as an escalation point when operational, clinical, pricing, availability, or service concerns arise.
- Hold the Inventory Lead accountable for maintaining an organized, reliable, and proactive inventory management system that supports daily surgical operations and continued practice growth.
Surgeon & Anesthesia Partnership
- Serve as a primary operational resource for surgeons regarding OR workflow, staffing, equipment, supplies, and surgical processes.
- Ensure surgeon preferences are understood and reasonably accommodated while maintaining consistency, safety, efficiency, and organizational standards.
- Identify recurring surgeon-specific or procedural operational needs and create reliable systems to address them.
- Partner with anesthesia to ensure appropriate staffing, equipment, medications, emergency preparedness, and patient flow.
- Communicate concerns regarding schedule feasibility, staffing, equipment, patient readiness, or operational risk before they negatively affect the surgical day.
- Support onboarding of new surgeons and anesthesia providers into facility workflows and expectations.
Cross-Functional Leadership
- Partner closely with the Clinic Manager to ensure strong communication and handoffs between clinic and surgical operations.
- Collaborate with patient care coordinators, scheduling, pre-operative teams, providers, anesthesia, inventory, finance, and organizational leadership.
- Participate in operational planning related to surgical volume, staffing, growth, new providers, new procedures, and facility expansion.
- Communicate operational concerns to leadership with proposed solutions whenever possible.
- Escalate significant patient safety, staffing, compliance, equipment, or operational risks promptly.
- Translate organizational initiatives into practical workflows for the surgical team.
- Serve as an advocate for both the surgical department and the broader goals of the organization.
Financial & Operational Stewardship
- Understand the financial impact of staffing, overtime, supply utilization, surgical delays, cancellations, inventory, and OR utilization.
- Assist leadership in developing and managing the surgical department budget.
- Evaluate purchasing decisions based on clinical need, utilization, safety, cost, and anticipated growth.
- Monitor staffing patterns and recommend adjustments based on surgical volume and department needs.
- Identify opportunities to improve efficiency or reduce unnecessary expense without compromising care.
- Help develop the operational infrastructure required to support continued surgical growth.
Growth, Leadership, and Department Development
The OR Manager is expected to lead the surgical department through continued growth while maintaining strong operational, financial, clinical, and regulatory performance.
- Partner with Clinical Strategy, the Business Director, Finance, and other leadership to plan for increased surgical volume, staffing needs, equipment, supplies, and future operational growth.
- Build scalable workflows, systems, and accountability structures that support expansion from two operating rooms to three and beyond.
- Develop and mentor team members, identify emerging leaders, and appropriately distribute responsibilities as the department grows.
- Evaluate staffing, workflow, resource utilization, and operational needs and bring forward thoughtful recommendations supported by clinical and financial considerations.
- Maintain ownership of day-to-day surgical operations and accreditation readiness while appropriately escalating complex regulatory, strategic, or organizational concerns.
- Identify operational or compliance concerns early, develop proposed solutions, and take responsibility for implementation and follow-through.
- Maintain organized, measurable systems that allow leadership to evaluate department performance, readiness, and areas for improvement.
- Collaborate across departments to ensure growth remains aligned with patient safety, surgeon experience, team development, financial stewardship, and organizational goals.
Pay: $90,000.00 - $110,000.00 per year
Benefits:
- 401(k)
- Dental insurance
- Employee discount
- Health insurance
- Health savings account
- Paid time off
- Parental leave
- Vision insurance
Work Location: In person
