Angela Buckley
Mount Washington,KY
Summary
Veteran Director of Quality Assurance with over four years leading inspection and validation efforts for VA. Equally comfortable overseeing massive team efforts or going hands-on to serve critical client representatives. Dedicated to maintaining both superlative final release quality and excellent employee morale.
Overview
13
13
years of professional experience
1
1
Certification
Work History
Director of Quality and Patient Safety
UL South
01.2023 - 01.2024
- Provide oversight for new hospital construction, tentatively scheduled to open in March 2024
- Oversight to include CMS, TJC, OSHA, and OIG state OIG standards compliance
- Interprets the impact of broad-scope organizational change for staff and develops change strategies for successful implementation
- Incorporates the facility’s vision, missions, and values in goals and programs within the Quality department
- Develop and manage operational initiatives with measurable outcomes as well as formulate objective goals and strategies collaboratively with other stakeholders
- Prepares and delivers reports to operational leadership outlining progress toward meeting annual goals and objectives, including performance related to finance, clinical activity, quality, safety, marketing, and human resources
- Establishes annual financial goals and actively uses benchmarking to high-performing systems in similar areas of expertise to set annual targets
- This would also include an annual operating budget and capital budget, demonstrating fiscal responsibility through meeting budget targets
- Creates business plan(s), justifying variances and analyzing cost benefit of the program
- Continually assesses all services, identifies problems, and utilizes data to analyze and propose innovative approaches
- Engages staff and other stakeholders in continuous improvement of systems and processes: manages resources for staff participation in improvement work activities
- Ensures effective facilitation of improvement teams and development of leadership skills to ensure overall effectiveness of improvement initiates
- Remains current with new trends and best practices and incorporates into Quality - Patient Safety practices and programs, articulates and enforces standards for quality/safe patient care
- Ensures development of Quality - Patient Safety initiatives to improve patient satisfaction, as well as staff and patient safety
- Demonstrates achievable and measurable results and develops action plans for improvement initiatives, monitors, and enforces regulatory requirements
- Improvement initiatives include quality improvement outcomes, cost and complication reduction, and the implementation of evidence-based medicine
- Articulates and presents data, information, and ideas clearly and concisely
- Manages the complex interdepartmental and interdisciplinary relationships to assure collaboration and effective/efficient operations within Quality - Patient Safety
- Identifies lack of competency in performance and establishes a plan that includes goals, interventions, and measures
- Ensures integration of ethical standards and core values into everyday work activities.
Manager, Risk Management
Robley Rex VA Medical Center
12.2022 - 12.2023
- Coordinates and administers risk identification, investigation, and education to monitor risk functions and perform risk surveys to assess loss potential
- Supports, and ensures the implementation of the System risk management strategies
- Works in collaboration with the Patient Safety Consultant to improve patient safety
- Performs investigations and responds to incidents/events, potential claims, and grievances presented against caregivers, physicians, and the organization for liability and damages
- Collects and records documents and evidence
- Maintains work product by legal requirements and sets up claims
- Ensures collaboration and mitigation of risk against liability and casualty loss
- Interacts with patients and their families when patient grievances arise
- Conducts a review of the concern and respond in writing to the patient
- Supports the work of the Complaint/Grievance Management program required by The Joint Commission
- Collaborates with patient safety, and the medical and departmental caregivers to ensure timely risk management review and management of serious patient events and medical errors
- Review the facilities variances for Sentinel Events
- Ensure that all State and/or Federal regulatory reporting agencies are notified of any unanticipated events to patients and potentially compensable events
- Provides clinical risk management guidance in safety stops including disclosure of unanticipated events
- Analyzes variance data trends and reports findings related to risk strategies
- Contributes to the development of mitigation and intervention strategies
- Regularly provides leadership with progress reports and data (including recommendations) related to risk management
- Investigates alleged EMTALA violations
- Ensures that applicable regulatory and accreditation requirements are met proactively
- Participates in the development of processes/systems designed to share and recognize performance improvements and compliance across the organization to mitigate risks to patient and caregiver safety/risks to the organization
- Reviews events and complaints that pose organizational risks requiring attention and investigation and develops appropriate responses in conjunction with the Executive Leadership and PR departments
- Participates in activities designed to reduce risk exposure and improve the quality and safety of patient care (e.g., Root Cause Analysis (RCA) and quality improvement teams.) Facilitates Risk Assessments as needed to proactively identify and evaluate areas of risk
- Works with Safety, Procurement, Clinical engineering, and Clinical Operations to identify medical device and equipment failures for purposes of improving organizational risk, patient safety, and reporting to the FDA
- Conducts investigations and analysis of the potential and actual property, auto, cyber, general, and professional liability claims filed against the facilities, employees, and medical staff in conjunction with the legal department
- Utilizes clinical expertise to review related clinical information (e.g., medical records, relevant medical literature); conducts investigatory interviews with individuals involved, named parties, and/or other clinical experts
- Manages or participates in all aspects of the claims process which includes but is not limited to coordination of depositions; response to interrogatories; requests for production of evidence; ensuring documentation and data management.
Nurse Educator
Sullivan University
08.2021 - 06.2023
- Instruct, educate, observe, and assist nursing students in hospital patient care and nursing processes using theory and evidence-based practice
- Prepare and administer weekly exams, assess progress, conduct course planning, and assist with study conflict resolution
- Create an inclusive learning environment that optimizes student success through collaborative mentoring with a positive leadership style
- Implemented innovative teambuilding strategies to help nursing students’ complete requirements and assist with patient care.
Research Compliance Officer
Robley Rex VA Medical Center
07.2017 - 12.2023
- Assess compliance risks, identify root causes of compliance exceptions, and develop corrective action plans to ensure effective enterprise-wide internal controls are in place
- Develop presentation of reports, including auditing tools and any related documentation
- Assess, investigate, and resolve complex issues and compose concise written reports including, statistical data for communication to other areas of leadership
- Identify error trends to determine the appropriate training needs and suggest modifications to policies and procedures
- Assess and assure the quality of study data, clinical site monitoring, statistical support, plan development and analyses, and safety monitoring
- Provide regulatory support including FDA submissions and interface coordination, logistical support for Data Safety and Monitoring Boards and Medical Monitor Oversight reports, assists with reporting and publication, electronic information systems development, as well as includes helping to oversee the facility’s clinical research management responsibilities
- Expert level of knowledge standards of human subjects protections for research studies
- Assist in the design of any new clinical study according to the study protocol as well as the recruitment projections (duration and speed of recruitment)
- Monitors closely the evolution of validated clinical study forecasts and shares them with the coordination, planning, packaging, and distribution teams
- Analyzes deviations, decides on corrective actions, controls readjustments, reports on the progress of studies, and validates milestones
- Accountable for medium, and long-term planning and global supply strategy for all clinical studies performed by R&D, Franchises, and subsidiaries
- Be a promoter of continuous improvement processes and guarantee the method, Respect and ensure all applicable good practices (GMP, GMPD, etc.) and Environmental, Health, and Safety rules through the protocol’s procedures
- Provide guidance and counsel on incorporating compliance-related activities into the day-to-day operations of the Human Research Protection Program
- Ensure regulatory and policy updates are disseminated to investigators and research staff
- Perform ongoing monitoring of all areas of research compliance
- Analyze and evaluate on a quantitative and/or qualitative basis, the effectiveness of proposed standards, regulations, programs, and policies as they relate to compliance issues
- Develop a compliance training program, ensuring it meets regulatory requirements and ensures that it is completed by appropriate staff members
- Develop procedures and systems for establishing, operating, and assessing the effectiveness of compliance control systems and the accomplishment, evaluation, and/or monitoring of audits, inspections, or management of internal control reviews
- Coordinates the preparation for survey and site visits.
Accreditation Manager/Patient Safety Manager
Robley Rex VA Medical Center
01.2011 - 01.2023
- Manages all aspects of the healthcare facility accreditation program including the attainment and maintenance of Joint Commission (TJC) accreditation
- Oversight includes the assessment, implementation, and maintenance of all department policies to assure their compliance with TJC accreditation standards
- This also includes providing support to any Accreditation survey that is being conducted onsite or remotely
- These could include TJC, ORO, CARF, CMS, and Consultant Services
- Review the Summary of Findings (SOF) documentation submitted by Surveyors to ensure accuracy and complete the review and deficiency report with appropriate services
- The documentation is authored to align with industry best practices
- Reviews and investigates patient safety issues filed by healthcare staff
- Assigns investigation of certain level complaints to unit-level supervisors
- Coordinates with joint investigators and writes reports of findings from the results of the investigations
- Perform daily, weekly, monthly, and/or quarterly quality reviews to support each function within the end-to-end process, at each service level to ensure execution of clinical outcomes
- Collaborates with the Chief of Quality, Operational Supervisors, and Executive Leadership to support compliance with all corporate policies as well as all departmental and national quality/certification initiatives
- Extensive knowledge of licensure regulations, Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations, and state/federal standards
- Identifies organization risk through trend analysis of incidents, reports, etc
- Many risks require that a Root Cause Analysis investigation is conducted, which includes assessing the need for focused review by departments, and or clinical chairpersons for peer reviews
- Spearheaded all aspects of ensuring organization-wide internal controls are established and functioning through assessment of compliance risks, identifying root causes of compliance, the exceptions, and developing and overseeing corrective action plans
- Claims, medical records, and processes including coding, clinical care, documentation, and health plan business regulation
- Collaborate with internal and external stakeholders on special projects, study designs, protocol and procedure, supply management, and the health plan payment policies to garner intel required to evaluate issues and identify and facilitate solutions and recommendations
- Solves complex and unusual issues by conducting research and analysis as required to create a corrective action plan that provides justifications, charts, graphs, and statistical and narrative data to justify findings and recommendations
- Strong communication, verbal, written, and graphical skills
- Excellent computer skills to include multiple EMR platforms and Microsoft applications.
Medical Negligence Case Consultant
VACO-Washington D.C.
01.2021 - 01.2021
- Provides healthcare consultations and technical advice by investigating malpractice claims, identifying, and locating witnesses and experts, and preparing case notes and summations for attorneys and other team members
- Provides risk-prevention methodologies to healthcare providers and other institutions
- Develops medical malpractice claims information by investigating hospital, nursing home, physician, and nursing negligence claims
- Provides unbiased opinions to determine the merits of legal or accreditation actions
- Provides medical records information by completing initial review and liability assessment, identifying health care providers, and preparing releases and letters to obtain complete medical records (including x-rays, charts, and billing information)
- Organizes, chronologically summarizes, analyzes, and indexes medical records and billings, and transcribes handwritten chart/record notes to prepare a timeline of events, and creates tables, charts, and graphs to illustrate data for use in the preparation of documents that are then reviewed by an expert advisory panel
- Review medical documents to identify, locate, and interview potential witnesses, including medical personnel
- Completes medical research needed in medical investigations and lawsuits by utilizing personal knowledge, experience, reference library, and the internet, defining and interpreting medical language and procedures, and medical hospital and/or office policies
- Maintains legal and accreditation compliance by adhering to policy positions concerning federal, state, and local regulations, and Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations standards and anticipates emerging issues
- Improves quality of cases by studying, evaluating, and re-designing processes
- Updates professional knowledge by participating in educational opportunities, reading professional publications, and participating in professional organizations.
Business Integrity Compliance Officer
01.2017 - 01.2019
- Assess compliance risks, identify root causes of compliance exceptions, and develop corrective action plans to ensure effective enterprise-wide internal controls are in place
- Understand internal Health Plan Departments (i.e., claims staff, customer service, Marketing, etc.) and external customers (i.e., Health System Internal Audit, Client Audit teams) to understand issues, identify solutions, and facilitate resolutions
- Assess, investigate, and resolve complex issues and compose concise written reports including, statistical data for communication to other areas of leadership
- Identify error trends to determine the appropriate training needs and suggest modifications to policies and procedures
- Review and analyze claims for Health Information Management systems (HIMS), medical records, and associated processes related to the appropriateness of coding, clinical care, documentation, and health plan business rule
- Analyze medical claims to understand and resolve claim referral issues through research and interaction with other Health Plan Departments, including Medical Management, Medical Directors, and various committees, to assist in developing new policies concerning future Health Plan payments
- Respond to fraud, waste, and abuse referrals and complete data analysis as related to the audits as assigned
- Complete monthly, quarterly, and yearly audits on multiple numbers of fiscal and business practices that affect hospital-wide initiatives
- Develop, initiate, maintain, and revise policies and procedures for the Compliance Programs’ general operations and related activities to prevent illegal, unethical, or improper conduct
- Collaborates and coordinates compliance activities for all the departments to help influence the organization’s mission of research, fiscal, and business practices
- High level of knowledge related to the standards of research and business regulatory compliance management, including design, data collection, and analysis.
Nurse Navigator-Interventional Radiology
01.2015 - 01.2017
- Provide education and instructions to patients and schedule procedures as appropriate
- Timely access to procedures is critical for patient care and satisfaction
- Provides psychosocial support to staff, patients, and family
- Responsible for promoting effective health care services and acts as a liaison for patients
- Educate patients and families on disease processes, medical-surgical procedures, and other aspects of therapeutic regimens, including medications, and pain management techniques
- Recommend and implement changes to the medical unit regarding assignment delegation and prioritization regulating a higher standard of patient care
- Collaborate effectively with the interdisciplinary team of medical and healthcare professionals comprising a physician, nurse manager, dietician, social worker, occupational therapist, and physical therapist.
Charge Nurse-4N Medical Surgical Unit
01.2011 - 01.2015
- Provide education and instructions to patients and schedule procedures as appropriate
- Facilitates timely access to procedures
- Follows patients for post-op procedures
- Ensures all proper patient documentation/information is available for the medical team
- Provides psychosocial support to staff, patients, and family
- Responsible for promoting effective health care services and acts as a liaison for patients
- Provide pre- and post-operative nursing care for adult patients with musculoskeletal and orthopedic injuries
- Educate patients and families on disease processes, medical-surgical procedures, and other aspects of therapeutic regimens, including medications, and pain management techniques
- Administer oral, intramuscular, and subcutaneous medications
- Recommend and implement changes to the medical unit regarding assignment delegation and prioritization regulating a higher standard of patient care
- Oversee all aspects of patient care including safety and pain management consultation, pre-and post-operative procedures, administering of oral, intramuscular, and subcutaneous medications, and proper use instruction of braces, prosthetics, and orthopedic equipment
- Collaborated with interdisciplinary medical team to meet mandates of patient-centered healthcare.
Education
Master of Nursing-Executive Leadership -
Purdue Global University
Fort Lauderdale, FL01.2020
Bachelor of Science in Nursing - undefined
Spalding University
Louisville, KY01.2008
Associate in Business Administration - undefined
Spalding University
Louisville, KY01.2008
Skills
- Six Sigma Methodologies
- Quality Management Systems
- ISO standards knowledge
- Corrective Action Planning
- Team Collaboration
- Operational budget forecasting
- Problem-Solving
- Organizational Skills
- Report Writing
- Effective Communication
- Attention to Detail
- Data Collection
- Policy Reinforcement
- Written Communication
- Continuous Improvement
- Analytical Thinking
- Adaptability and Flexibility
- Team building
- Strong Work Ethic
- Interpersonal Communication
- Professional Demeanor
- Problem-solving aptitude
- Decision-Making
- Critical Thinking
Certification
- Kentucky Board of Nursing, Registered Nurse, 2009
- Advanced Cardiac Life Support Certified, Expires May 2026
- Basic Life Support, Expires May 2025
- Scholarship recipient Kentucky Board of Nursing, CHPQ Certification, Testing May 2024
Accomplishments
- Medical Star Employee of the Quarter, 2023
- Awards Ceremony Producer, 2019, National Veterans Wheelchair Games
- Special Emphasis Disability Coordinator, 2022
Timeline
Director of Quality and Patient Safety
UL South
01.2023 - 01.2024
Manager, Risk Management
Robley Rex VA Medical Center
12.2022 - 12.2023
Nurse Educator
Sullivan University
08.2021 - 06.2023
Medical Negligence Case Consultant
VACO-Washington D.C.
01.2021 - 01.2021
Research Compliance Officer
Robley Rex VA Medical Center
07.2017 - 12.2023
Business Integrity Compliance Officer
01.2017 - 01.2019
Nurse Navigator-Interventional Radiology
01.2015 - 01.2017
Accreditation Manager/Patient Safety Manager
Robley Rex VA Medical Center
01.2011 - 01.2023
Charge Nurse-4N Medical Surgical Unit
01.2011 - 01.2015
Master of Nursing-Executive Leadership -
Purdue Global University
Bachelor of Science in Nursing - undefined
Spalding University
Associate in Business Administration - undefined
Spalding University