Chief Nursing Officer

Located in the heart of California, the Adventist Health Central California Network is the region’s most fully integrated system of care, delivering services across the entire healthcare continuum.

The Patient Care Executive serves as the chief nurse executive for the largest network of care in Adventist Health. With a network of eight hospitals and more than 130 clinics, we provide care to community members in Madera, Fresno, Kings, Tulare, and Kern counties, reaching 33 unique communities from the Mojave Desert through the Central Valley to the foothills of the Sierra Nevada and beyond. This deep responsibility drives our dedicated team of 8,000 employees and providers to live God’s love in all that we do as we care for the communities we serve.

Our hospitals include Adventist Health Reedley, Adventist Health Selma, Adventist Health Hanford, Adventist Health Tulare, Adventist Health Bakersfield, Adventist Health Specialty Bakersfield, Adventist Health Delano, and Adventist Health Tehachapi Valley. With more than 450 providers, 33 specialties, and over 1,000 clinic-based team members, we serve more than 2 million patients annually. We operate the busiest cancer center in Adventist Health and perform more open-heart surgeries at Adventist Health Bakersfield, than in any hospital across our larger Adventist Health system. Known for our excellence in patient-safety, Adventist Health in Hanford, Selma, Tulare, Bakersfield, and Delano have been awarded "A" safety grades from The Leapfrog Group for Fall 2025.

Job Summary:

The Patient Care Executive has overall accountability for providing leadership, strategic direction, and administration of day-to-day operations associated with direct patient care activities in all care settings. The position is responsible for leading, supporting and modeling a mission and service-oriented culture focused on patient safety, quality, patient experience and employee engagement 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. This executive position serves as a member of the executive leadership team at the organization and system levels.

Job Requirements:

Education and Work Experience:

• Bachelor's Degree in Nursing (BSN) or related field: Required
• Master's Degree in nursing or related field or the knowledge and skills associated with an advanced degree or written plan to obtain these qualifications: Required
• DNP Degree in Nursing Executive Leadership: Preferred

Licenses/Certifications:

• Registered Nurse (RN) licensure in the state of practice: Required
• Certification in Executive Nursing Practice Exam (CENP) or Nurse Executive Advanced (NEA) Certification: Preferred

Essential Functions:

• Functions as an integral member of the organization and system leadership teams to provide effective leadership and to coordinate leaders to deliver nursing care, treatment, and services. Assumes an active leadership role and represents nursing with the organization’s governing body, medical staff and other clinical leaders in the organization’s decision-making structure and process. Leads and provides oversight of the strategic development, implementation, and maintenance of strong, comprehensive clinical and/or operational services and programs that meet the needs of populations in the community and aligned system initiatives. Establishes a framework for patient care management within the facility, taking into account patient mix, community needs, staff skills and knowledge, available personnel, material resources, regulatory requirements and healthcare expectations. Strategizes and leads process improvement focused on innovative care delivery and/or operational models designed to improve clinical services, outcomes, patient throughput, and patient safety in all care settings. Provides leadership to clinical teams to deliver nursing care, treatment, and services. Creates a vision for patient experience; evaluates and acts on feedback from the voice of the patient and family. Champions, models, and promotes service excellence philosophies and behaviors within the organization. Promotes a patient centered, healing environment and fosters an environment for superior service and care delivery.
• Works in collaboration with the CMO and establishes positive collaborative working relationships with physicians and other colleagues and departmental leaders to foster the organizations philosophy and goals and helps to achieve the organizational goals. Builds and supports effective collegial relationships with applicable internal and external constituents and stakeholders to ensure optimal operating effectiveness and strategic positioning. Represents the organization in community meetings and activities. Acts as a liaison and collaborates with nursing educators and appropriate nursing leaders to influence nursing education curricula (as available). Promotes the use and implementation of technology in the workplace in order to streamline operations, facilitate communications, and optimize work processes. Ensures and fosters a high level of collaboration within a highly matrixed team environment in order to coordinate activities, review work, exchange information, and resolve complex issues.
• Champions an environment where patient safety is pervasive in all care settings and is an integral part of all business activities. Articulates and demonstrates an expectation for continuous improvements in patient safety and quality. Oversees the development, implementation, and monitoring of an effective, ongoing program to measure, assess, and improve the quality of patient care, treatment and services delivered to patients. Makes certain that hospital-wide quality assessment and performance improvement and training programs address problems identified by the individual responsible for infection prevention and control and that corrective action plans are successfully implemented. Maintains a working knowledge of current clinical practice and the regulatory requirements affecting the practice. Demonstrates an in-depth knowledge of healthcare economics and policy. Provides a culture for coordination of care, treatment, and services among the hospital’s different programs, services, sites and departments. Leads and ensures continuous improvement in care management, care transitions and utilization management across the organization.
• Promotes quality by incorporating current nursing research findings, nationally recognized professional standards, and other expert literature into policies and procedures governing the provisions of nursing care, treatment, and services. Establishes and enhances a culture of evidence-based decision making in clinical and management initiatives. Articulates, implements and ensures integration of the Adventist Professional Practice model in clinical practice. Ensures continuous improvement of clinical services throughout the organization based on standards of nursing practice.
• Oversees the development and implementation and evaluation of hospital-wide programs, policies, procedures, and staff guidelines that address how nursing care needs of the patient population are assessed, met, and evaluated and are consistent with state, federal and other regulatory requirements. Implements nursing policies, procedures and standards that describe and guide how the staff provide nursing care, treatment, and services. Approves nursing policies and procedures, nursing standards of care, treatment and services, and standards of nursing practice prior to implementation and provides nursing staff access to nursing policies, procedures and standards of practice. Ensures that nursing policies and procedures are reviewed and revised according to hospital policy. Responsible for setting and approving standards of practice for both unlicensed and licensed nursing staff. Provides for the adequate supervision and evaluation of the clinical activities of non-employee personnel which occur within the responsibility of the nursing service. Oversees peer review as it relates to national nursing practice, including APNs evaluation and performance. Oversees the coordination of ongoing education and development for nursing and other clinical staff as indicated and assures regular needs assessment and program planning to address these needs. Monitors environmental factors affecting educational development of staff and defines resources available to address same. Responsible for seeing that all nursing staff receive mandated education.
• Assumes overall responsibility for the provision of nursing services 24 hours a day, 7 days a week with the authority, responsibility and accountability for the nursing service within the facility. Exercises final authority over staff who provide nursing care, treatment and services. Routinely assumes oversight responsibility for the provision of safe, effective, high-quality nursing care throughout the hospital (and hospital based entities); development, presentation, and management of the nursing services’ portion of the hospitals’ budget, work team productivity; consumer satisfaction activities; and staff retention efforts. Promotes financial stewardship and clinical excellence for the facility in both operational and capital acquisition processes.

Full Job Description on Adventist Health's career page.