Patient Relations Consultant

Location: 1035 Cambridge Street
Work Days: 8:00am - 4:30pm
Category: Professional and Management
Department: Patient Experience and Complaints
Job Type: Full time
Work Shift: Day
Hours/Week: 40
Union Name: Non Union

The Division of Quality is responsible for promoting a culture of safety, patient and staff engagement, and performance excellence aligned with national patient safety goals.

The Patient Relations Consultant plays a critical role within Cambridge Health Alliance (CHA), serving a diverse patient population as a liaison between patients, their families, and healthcare teams to ensure concerns are addressed and patient perspectives inform improvement. The consultant serves as a patient advocate, facilitating the resolution of concerns and mediating communication between patients, families, and care teams, while elevating patient feedback to strengthen a culture of safety, reliability, and patient-centered care.

This position is responsible for managing complaints, Human Rights inquiries, and Quality of Care complaints in accordance with CMS and DMH guidelines. In addition to resolution of individual concerns, the consultant identifies patterns and themes in patient feedback and partners with clinical and operational leaders to facilitate service recovery, promote learning, and support improvement efforts.

Working closely with the Director of Patient Experience and partners across Quality and Safety—including Risk Management, Performance Improvement, and the Quality & Safety Data and Analytics teams—the Patient Relations Consultant contributes to CHA’s High Reliability journey by ensuring the patient voice informs organizational learning, service recovery, and improvement efforts, while supporting regulatory readiness and compliance.

Responsibilities:

• Patient Relations Consultant Duties
• Complaint Management: Timely investigation, resolution, and response to all patient concerns, complaints, and grievances in adherence to CMS guidelines.
• Service Recovery: Collaborate with leadership to identify and implement service recovery opportunities to ensure exceptional patient/family experience outcomes. Rounding in Med Surg Units to provide Service Recovery coaching as needed.
• Patient Advocacy: Act as a patient advocate, ensuring patient and human rights are respected and their voices are heard throughout their care journey.
• Documentation and Reporting: Maintain meticulous records of complaints, investigations, and resolutions, contributing to data-driven decision-making for patient experience improvement.
• Cultural Competency: Contribute to building patient experience programs that align with and support cultural competency, diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts.
• Collaboration: Partner with various departments and frontline staff to understand patient needs and concerns, and to promote a shared vision for service excellence.
• Elevate the Patient Voice: Ensure patient feedback is meaningfully represented in organizational learning by sharing themes, insights, and direct patient perspectives in the Grievance Committee and other governance forums.
• Organizational Learning: Identify themes and trends from patient concerns and partner with clinical and operational leaders to ensure patient feedback informs quality, safety, and patient experience improvement initiatives.
• Early Warning System: Recognize and escalate patient concerns that may signal emerging safety, quality, or system issues, supporting a proactive approach to harm prevention and service improvement.
• Patient Voice Integration: Collaborate with the Director of Patient Experience to ensure patient feedback and lived experiences are incorporated into governance discussions, improvement initiatives, and the Grievance Committee.

Essential Skills

• Problem Solving & Resolution: Demonstrate strong analytical and problem-solving skills to effectively investigate and resolve complex patient concerns.
• Communication: Possess excellent communication skills (written and verbal) to effectively interact with patients, families, staff, and leadership, often in sensitive situations.
• Empathy & Compassion: Exhibit a high degree of empathy, compassion, and cultural sensitivity when interacting with a diverse patient population.
• Collaboration & Teamwork: Work collaboratively with the Patient Relations team, the Director of Patient Experience, and other departments to achieve shared goals.
• Regulatory Compliance: Maintain current knowledge of CMS and DMH guidelines for complaint management.
• Data Utilization: Contribute to the interpretation and analysis of patient experience data to identify opportunities for improvement.
• Continuous Improvement: Actively participate in efforts to identify actions for CHA to achieve national best practice status with respect to patient experience.
• Discretion & Confidentiality: Maintain the highest level of discretion and confidentiality regarding patient information and sensitive issues.
• Systems Thinking: Ability to recognize patterns in patient concerns and connect individual experiences to broader opportunities for quality, safety, and system improvement.

Education:

• Bachelor’s degree required; degree in psychology, counseling, nursing, social work, public health, or a related clinical or behavioral health field preferred. Experience may be substituted in lieu of degree.
• Master’s degree preferred.

Experience:

• Minimum of three years' experience in patient relations, patient advocacy, or a similar role within a healthcare setting.
• Experience working with diverse patient populations is strongly preferred.
• Bi-lingual skills are preferred.

Skills:

• Demonstrated ability to manage and resolve complex complaints and sensitive issues.
• Strong understanding of patient rights and advocacy principles.
• Ability to work independently and as part of a team in a fast-paced environment.
• Proficiency in relevant software applications for documentation and reporting.
• Ability to understand and apply regulatory guidelines (CMS).
• Strong organizational skills and attention to detail.

Please note that the final offer may vary within the listed Pay Range, based on a candidate's experience, skills, qualifications, and internal equity considerations.

In keeping with federal, state and local laws, Cambridge Health Alliance (CHA) policy forbids employees and associates to discriminate against anyone based on race, religion, color, gender, age, marital status, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity, veteran status, disability or any other characteristic protected by law. We are committed to establishing and maintaining a workplace free of discrimination. We are fully committed to equal employment opportunity. We will not tolerate unlawful discrimination in the recruitment, hiring, termination, promotion, salary treatment or any other condition of employment or career development. Furthermore, we will not tolerate the use of discriminatory slurs, or other remarks, jokes or conduct, that in the judgment of CHA, encourage or permit an offensive or hostile work environment.