Senior Director, Communications -Ambulatory & Physician Practices

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The Senior Director of Ambulatory and Physician Practices Communications is a senior leader within the Duke University Health System’s (DUHS) Internal Communications department. This role is responsible for developing and executing a comprehensive communications strategy that advances the priorities of DUHS’s ambulatory enterprise and physician practices (Duke Health Integrated Practice (DHIP) and Duke Primary Care (DPC)) including Duke Health’s outpatient clinics as well as the clinical departments and community practices.

The Senior Director provides strategic counsel to senior leaders across the physician practices and ambulatory operations and collaborates closely with system communications partners in Marketing, External Relations, and Internal Communications. This role ensures clear, aligned, and proactive communication that supports patient care, access, patient experience, operational transformation, workforce engagement, and DUHS’s mission to provide outstanding care across the clinical departments, physician practices and all ambulatory settings.

• Serve as the strategic communications lead for the DUHS ambulatory platform and physician practices, ensuring alignment with DUHS priorities, operational goals, and systemwide communications strategies.
• Partner closely with DUHS and ambulatory leadership to understand key issues, opportunities, and emerging needs across clinics, outpatient centers, and supporting functions.
• Provide strategic counsel on communication approaches related to access, care delivery, safety, patient experience, provider engagement, and operational improvements.
• Ensure tight coordination with Marketing, Media Relations, Internal Communications, and Digital teams to support a unified, aligned, and timely communications approach.
• Lead integrated communications planning for large cross-functional initiatives impacting ambulatory operations.
• Use qualitative and quantitative data to guide strategy
• Anticipate communication risks, misalignment or workforce impact and proactively design mitigation strategies.
• Drive executive communications, including leadership remarks and narrative development, serving as a trusted advisor to senior leaders to ensure messages are strategically aligned, clearly framed, and delivered in each leader’s authentic voice.

• Build and execute an internal communications strategy that meets the needs of specialty and primary care practices and a diverse ambulatory workforce, including clinical care teams, physicians, and administrative staff across multiple sites and settings.
• Establish and enforce internal communications governance, standards, and escalation protocols for ambulatory and physician practice communications.
• Work closely with the Duke School of Medicine communication office to support internal communications for clinical departments, ensuring alignment with clinical department
• Design and lead change communications strategies that support awareness, understanding, adoption, and sustainment of operational and clinical initiatives.
• Translate complex operational and clinical changes into clear, role-specific, and actionable messaging for frontline teams.
• Oversee development and delivery of communications across channels including intranet, team newsletters, operational updates, executive messaging, video, and leadership toolkits.
• Develop toolkits, FAQs, and cascading communication assets to support leaders in consistent message delivery.
• Establish feedback loops to assess understanding, sentiment, and adoption, and adjust messaging accordingly.

• Support communication strategies that advance patient access, clinic flow, care coordination, and patient experience across ambulatory sites.
• Collaborate with Marketing and Digital teams to ensure patient-facing communication (web, scheduling,…