ASCENSION is seeking an experienced Public Health Quality Improvement Consultant to lead the development of a comprehensive Quality Improvement Plan and the update of a five-year Strategic Plan for a Maryland local health department.

The consultant will serve as ASCENSION’s primary subject matter expert and single point of contact for the engagement. This individual will work directly with the customer’s Health Planner, Health Officer, Director of Administration, executive leadership, and Quality Improvement Advisory Committee to assess the organization’s current quality improvement capacity, establish a sustainable quality improvement framework, and align strategic priorities with applicable Maryland public health initiatives and accreditation expectations.

This opportunity is well suited for a senior public health consultant who can independently move between organizational assessment, strategic planning, performance management, facilitation, technical writing, accreditation readiness, and training. The successful candidate must be able to convert broad organizational goals, stakeholder input, policies, metrics, and accreditation requirements into practical plans, governance processes, performance measures, and implementation tools.

ASCENSION is particularly interested in candidates who are thoughtful facilitators, disciplined project managers, strong technical writers, and credible advisors to public health executives. The consultant must be comfortable working in an environment where information may be incomplete, stakeholder perspectives may differ, and recommendations must remain practical within the customer’s available resources.

Contractor Role Summary

The Public Health Quality Improvement Consultant will plan and execute the full scope of the quality improvement and strategic planning engagement. The consultant will begin by reviewing existing plans, policies, performance-management practices, organizational documentation, and relevant public health metrics. The consultant will then assess the customer’s quality improvement infrastructure, governance, workforce readiness, organizational culture, and accreditation needs.

Using the assessment findings, the consultant will develop a written Quality Improvement Plan addressing governance, leadership and staff responsibilities, standardized quality improvement methodology, project selection and prioritization, performance measurement, reporting, communications, documentation, and integration with the customer’s Performance Management System.

The consultant will also update the existing Strategic Plan and align it with the State Health Improvement Plan, Community Health Improvement Plan, Achieving Health Care Efficiency through Accountable Design initiative, Workforce Development Plan, Quality Improvement Plan, and Public Health Accreditation Board requirements.

The individual will be responsible for managing the project schedule, facilitating stakeholder discussions, preparing monthly reports, maintaining decision and action logs, developing draft and final deliverables, responding to consolidated customer comments, and delivering one training session to the Quality Improvement Advisory Committee.

Because ASCENSION proposes a single-subject-matter-expert delivery model, the consultant must possess sufficient experience to manage the engagement with limited supervision while recognizing when issues require escalation to ASCENSION leadership.

Primary Objectives

The consultant will help the customer:

• Establish a formal and sustainable framework for continuous quality improvement.
• Define clear quality improvement governance, authority, roles, and accountability.
• Assess organizational quality improvement capacity, infrastructure, culture, and readiness.
• Develop practical criteria for selecting, prioritizing, executing, and documenting improvement projects.
• Strengthen performance measurement, reporting, and management practices.
• Align the Quality Improvement Plan with Public Health Accreditation Board requirements.
• Update the Strategic Plan to reflect current state and local public health priorities.
• Prepare leadership and the Quality Improvement Advisory Committee to implement and sustain the plans.
• Produce clear, complete, accurate, and acceptance-ready deliverables.

Day-to-Day and Project-Based Activities

The selected consultant will:

• Serve as ASCENSION’s primary liaison to the customer’s Health Planner and coordinate routine project communications.
• Lead the project kickoff meeting and confirm objectives, stakeholder roles, decision authority, schedule, deliverables, and review procedures.
• Develop and maintain a detailed project work plan covering assessment, stakeholder engagement, plan development, review, training, and finalization activities.
• Maintain project schedules, action-item logs, decision logs, risk registers, document inventories, and deliverable trackers.
• Conduct monthly progress meetings and additional focused working sessions with customer leadership and designated stakeholders.
• Review existing strategic plans, quality documents, policies, procedures, performance reports, workforce plans, organizational materials, and accreditation documentation.
• Assess the customer’s current quality improvement capacity, infrastructure, governance, workforce knowledge, organizational culture, and implementation readiness.
• Design interview guides, document-review tools, maturity-assessment criteria, facilitation materials, and structured data-collection instruments.
• Interview leadership, program representatives, Quality Improvement Advisory Committee members, and other designated stakeholders.
• Facilitate discussions to identify organizational priorities, performance barriers, quality improvement opportunities, risks, and resource constraints.
• Analyze qualitative and quantitative information to identify strengths, gaps, root causes, dependencies, and improvement opportunities.
• Document current-state findings and translate assessment results into practical recommendations.
• Develop a quality improvement governance structure that defines committee membership, authority, responsibilities, meeting cadence, escalation pathways, and decision-making protocols.
• Establish standardized quality improvement processes using methods such as Plan-Do-Study-Act cycles.
• Define criteria for identifying, evaluating, prioritizing, approving, documenting, monitoring, and closing quality improvement projects.
• Develop performance measures, key performance indicators, reporting processes, data-review routines, and accountability practices.
• Create communication strategies for sharing quality improvement priorities, progress, results, lessons learned, and organizational expectations.
• Integrate the Quality Improvement Plan with the customer’s Performance Management System, Strategic Plan, and Workforce Development Plan.
• Crosswalk Quality Improvement Plan provisions and supporting documentation against applicable Public Health Accreditation Board requirements.
• Identify documentation and process improvements that support accreditation readiness.
• Update strategic priorities, objectives, initiatives, measures, and implementation considerations within the existing five-year Strategic Plan.
• Align the updated Strategic Plan with the State Health Improvement Plan, Community Health Improvement Plan, AHEAD initiative, and Quality Improvement Plan.
• Draft clear, logically organized, and implementation-ready Quality Improvement and Strategic Plans.
• Incorporate customer comments while maintaining version control, traceability, and consistency across related documents.
• Prepare monthly progress reports linked to the approved work plan and completed activities.
• Document hours, accomplishments, deliverables, and supporting information required for monthly invoicing.
• Develop training materials, job aids, presentation slides, examples, and implementation tools for the Quality Improvement Advisory Committee.
• Deliver one interactive training session addressing the approved plan, governance model, quality improvement methodology, performance measures, and associated processes.
• Evaluate participant understanding through discussion, exercises, knowledge checks, or feedback instruments, as appropriate.
• Perform detailed self-review and quality-control checks before submitting deliverables to ASCENSION and the customer.
• Verify that deliverables are complete, factually supported, properly formatted, clearly written, and responsive to customer acceptance criteria.
• Protect customer information and comply with applicable Maryland data-security, confidentiality, records-management, accessibility, and information-technology requirements.
• Escalate schedule, performance, stakeholder, data, or acceptance risks to ASCENSION leadership promptly.
• Support orderly project closeout, final document transfer, records disposition, and knowledge transfer.