Primary Location:

Peace - Lexington

Address:

1 Saint Joseph Drive Lexington, KY 40504

Shift:

Salary Shift (United States of America)

Job Description Summary:

About UofL Health:
UofL Health is a fully integrated regional academic health system with five hospitals, four medical centers, nearly 200 physician practice locations, more than 700 providers, the Frazier Rehabilitation Institute and Brown Cancer Center.
With more than 12,000 team members—physicians, surgeons, nurses, pharmacists and other highly skilled health care professionals—UofL Health is focused on one mission: delivering patient-centered care to each and every patient each and every day.

Job Description:

Position Summary and Purpose
The Director, Peace Lexington Operations is responsible for developing and executing market-facing strategies that drive referral growth, strengthen relationships with key partners, and elevate the organization’s presence in the behavioral health (psychiatric) care space. This leader oversees business development initiatives specific to the Lexington market and supervises outreach functions to ensure coordinated, high-impact volume generation across the region.

This role will also focus on market intelligence, network development, and the creation of scalable strategies that enhance access and drive consistent inflow to behavioral health services.
Essential Functions:
1.    Develop a comprehensive business development strategy to grow referral volume across inpatient, outpatient, and specialty behavioral health services. 
2.    Conduct market analysis to identify unmet behavioral health needs, competitive positioning, and new partnership opportunities. 
3.    Create and implement growth plans focused on referral expansion, service awareness, and strategic market penetration. 
4.    Recommend and execute initiatives that enhance service line visibility and strengthen broader behavioral health integration efforts.
5.    Build and maintain strong, productive relationships with referring providers, hospitals, community agencies, schools, crisis organizations, and other key stakeholders. 
6.    Serve as the executive ambassador for behavioral health services in the market, representing the program’s strengths and differentiators. 
7.    Partner with physicians, clinical leaders, and operational executives to ensure alignment of business development efforts with service capabilities and organizational priorities.
8.    Lead, mentor, and develop a team of outreach specialists, liaisons, or marketers who support volume growth activities. 
9.    Set clear performance goals, establish metrics, and implement best practices to drive consistency and accountability. 
10.    Foster a culture of proactive engagement, continuous improvement, and strong customer service orientation within the business development function.
11.    Track, analyze, and report on referral patterns, volume trends, and market activity to inform strategic decision-making. 
12.    Monitor ROI of business development initiatives and optimize deployment of resources to achieve greatest impact with moderate cost footprint. 
13.    Provide regular updates to leadership on progress toward growth targets, risk areas, and strategic opportunities.
14.    Performs other duties as assigned.

Other Functions:
•    Work closely with marketing, clinical operations, finance, and strategic planning to ensure coordinated efforts that support growth goals. 
•    Support the development of new programs, service lines, or partnerships based on market demand and organizational capacity. 
•    Collaborate with internal teams to improve access, enhance referral workflows, and eliminate barriers to utilization.
 

Additional Job Description:

Job Requirements
(Education, Experience, Licensure and Certification)
Education: Master’s Degree in business, healthcare administration, marketing, social work or related field required. 

Experience: 7+ years of business development, strategic partnerships, or healthcare growth leadership experience required; behavioral health or hospital experience strongly preferred.

Job Competency:
Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities critical to this role: 
•    Deep understanding of behavioral health (psychiatric) services, including inpatient, outpatient, crisis, partial hospitalization, and community-based programs. 
•    Knowledge of national and regional trends in behavioral health access, referral pathways, regulatory standards, and competitive dynamics. 
•    Understanding of referral networks including hospitals, EDs, primary care, psychiatry, pediatric practices, schools, payers, and community agencies. 
•    Familiarity with healthcare operations such as intake, scheduling, access management, utilization management, and case management workflows.
•    Working knowledge of compliance requirements related to outreach and business development (e.g., anti-kickback statutes, Stark Law, privacy laws). 
•    Understanding of financial metrics such as cost per acquisition, ROI, payer mix analysis, volume forecasting, and margin implications. 
•    Ability to design and execute strategic growth plans to drive referral volume across behavioral health service lines. 
•    Skilled in assessment of unmet market needs, stakeholder mapping, competitive analysis, and development of high-potential partnerships. 
•    Adept at identifying and prioritizing growth levers within cost constraints.
•    Strong relationship development skills with both clinical and non-clinical stakeholders internally and externally. 
•    Skilled at building trust with referring providers, community organizations, and healthcare partners. 
•    Strong negotiation, persuasion, and consultative communication skills.
•    Skilled in creating an accountable, high-performance culture with clear metrics and consistent follow-through.
•    Ability to translate insights into tactics that improve referral capture and access performance.
•    Ability to work closely with behavioral health operations, intake/access teams, marketing, strategic planning, and finance.
•    Strong written and verbal communication skills with the ability to present insights, strategies, and results to senior leadership.
•    Competency with Microsoft Office.

UofL Health Core Expectation:
At UofL Health, we expect all our employees to live the values of honesty, integrity and compassion and demonstrate these values in their interactions with others and as they deliver excellent patient care by:
•    Honoring and caring for the dignity of all persons 
•    Ensuring the highest quality of care for those we serve
•    Working together as a team to achieve our goals
•    Improving continuously by listening, and asking for and responding to feedback
•    Seeking new and better ways to meet the needs of those we serve 
•    Using our resources wisely
•    Understanding how each of our roles contributes to the success of UofL Health