Hospice Administrator

Hospice Administrator

Leading Faith-Based, Not-for-Profit Health System Home Care & Hospice Division

Greater Kansas City - Johnson County, Kansas Full-Time, Exempt Monday-Friday, 8:00 a.m.-5:00 p.m. On-Site

COMPENSATION: $98,446 - $183,102 ANNUALLY

Plus annual merit progression, incentive eligibility, and a full benefits package effective day one

You did not take a hospice leadership role to spend your week defending a visit budget. But for a lot of administrators that is what the job became - census pressure from above, a thinning interdisciplinary team below, an audit response due Friday, and a decision chain that runs through people who have never sat with a family at two in the morning. Nearly half of healthcare executives reported in 2025 that they intended to leave their roles within the year. Most of them did not stop believing in the work. They stopped being given the room to do it.

This role gives the room back - full operating and financial authority over a Kansas City hospice program, with a genuine growth mandate, inside a not-for-profit system whose owners are a mission, not a fund.

THE OPPORTUNITY

Our client - a Glassdoor Employees' Choice "Best Places to Work" honoree, a Fortune "Best Workplaces in Health Care" company, and one of the largest faith-based not-for-profit health systems in the United States - is seeking a Hospice Administrator to lead its hospice business across the Kansas City metropolitan market. You will own the strategic plan, the operating budget, the regulatory posture and the leadership team for a program embedded inside the largest health care provider in its county: a 500-plus-bed flagship hospital, a network of emergency and urgent care sites, six physician office buildings, and a fully integrated home health and hospice enterprise - one mission, one medical record. Referrals originate inside the system's own hospitals, physician practices and post-acute network rather than from a cold-call sales motion. The mandate is explicitly a growth mandate: leading strategic expansion, evaluating and developing inpatient hospice capacity, and partnering with the system's charitable foundation on philanthropic strategy. You will operate as an executive with real authority and a build agenda - not as a compliance figurehead administering someone else's spreadsheet.

WHY THIS ROLE IS DIFFERENT
• Genuine Autonomy - With Something to Build - You own the strategy, the budget, the policies and the team, and you are handed a growth agenda rather than a maintenance assignment: expansion planning, potential inpatient unit development, and foundation partnership. You are hired to make the call and be accountable for the result, not to route every decision through a distant approval chain.
• Mission Over Margin - A 2025 Health Affairs analysis of nearly 3,000 freestanding hospices found not-for-profit agencies spend $43.30 per patient day on nursing care versus $34.40 at private-equity-owned hospices and $33.10 at publicly traded ones - roughly 20 to 24 percent less. Private equity and public companies now serve more than a quarter of the 1.7 million Americans on hospice each year. Here, surplus is reinvested in staffing, bereavement services and community care, because there is no distribution waiting on the other end.
• A Properly Resourced Interdisciplinary Team - You will lead a complete IDT - nursing, aides, social work, chaplaincy, bereavement and volunteers - and a system that actually funds it, with staff development and training treated as a budget line rather than an aspiration. The difference shows up in visit frequency, family experience scores and who is still on your team in eighteen months.
• Collaboration, Not Isolation - You sit inside a division leadership group and a system-wide post-acute network, with peer administrators, shared clinical governance, and legal, compliance, HR, finance and marketing infrastructure behind you. The regulatory and audit burden that flattens standalone agency leaders is carried by an organization built to absorb it.
• A Schedule Built for a Human Being - Monday through Friday, 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., with executive-level scope and a leadership structure that shares administrative coverage. Rare after-hours escalation - not a pager that never stops.
• An Employer That Invests in You - Medical, dental, vision, life and disability coverage effective day one with no waiting period; paid time off starting day one; a 403(b) retirement plan; four weeks of paid parental leave; tuition assistance and degree pathways through the system's own accredited university; whole-person wellness and dedicated mental health support; and pet benefits. The same investment in leaders that the organization asks leaders to make in their teams.

WHAT YOU'LL DO
• Lead the annual strategic plan for the hospice program - setting direction for growth, market position and service expansion, including evaluation and development of inpatient hospice capacity.
• Own financial performance end to end - budget development, cost containment, productivity, payer mix and margin - ensuring the long-term financial viability of the program.
• Report quarterly to division and system leadership on team, operations, financial and clinical performance, translating results into the next set of operating decisions.
• Build and direct the leadership team - establishing organizational structure, hiring, coaching and evaluating managers, and setting a culture that keeps experienced clinicians from becoming a turnover statistic.
• Safeguard regulatory and accreditation standing across local, state and federal requirements - CMS Conditions of Participation, state licensure and survey readiness - and build the documentation discipline that keeps clinicians out of audit churn.
• Develop and implement operating policy and procedure, aligning local practice with corporate standards while preserving what makes the program work on the ground.
• Represent the organization in the community - speaking engagements, referral partners, civic groups and families - and partner with the charitable foundation on fundraising and philanthropic strategy.
• Direct staff development and training programs that sustain quality of care and compliance across the interdisciplinary team.

WHO YOU ARE

Required
• Bachelor's degree in Business Administration, Healthcare Administration or a related field.
• Seven or more years of healthcare management or closely related experience.
• Three or more years of hospice leadership experience.
• Demonstrated command of budget preparation, fiscal management and cost containment.
• Strong working knowledge of hospice operations and of advanced business and not-for-profit management practice.
• Proven ability to lead effectively in a matrix-management environment.
• Analytical and problem-solving strength, strong organizational skills, and excellent oral and written communication.
• Proficiency with Microsoft Office (Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint).

Preferred
• Master's degree in Health Care Administration, Business Administration or a related field.
• Prior experience serving as a hospice administrator or agency executive.
• Experience opening, operating or expanding a hospice inpatient unit, or multi-site post-acute operating experience.
• Familiarity with hospice EMR platforms and HIS/CAHPS Hospice quality reporting.
• Track record of building interdisciplinary teams and reducing clinical staff turnover.
• Experience partnering with a charitable foundation, board or community advisory group.

YOUR TOTAL REWARDS

Compensation
• Posted range of $98,446.40 - $183,102.40 annually, positioned by experience and scope, with annual merit progression and leadership incentive eligibility.

Health & Wellness
• Medical, dental, vision, life and disability coverage effective day one - no waiting period - with multiple plan options, pharmacy coverage and fully covered preventive care.
• Whole-person well-being programming built around body, mind and spirit, plus dedicated mental health resources and an Employee Assistance Program.

Financial Security
• 403(b) retirement plan with employer contribution, plus short- and long-term disability, AD&D and tax-advantaged spending accounts.

Growth & Development
• Tuition assistance and degree pathways through the system's own accredited university, with leadership development, mentoring and internal mobility across a nine-state footprint.

Work-Life Balance
• Paid time off accruing from day one, four weeks of paid parental leave, family support resources, employee discount programs and pet benefits.

ABOUT THE ORGANIZATION

Our client is one of the largest faith-based, not-for-profit health systems in the country - more than 50 hospitals and hundreds of care sites across nine states, with a workforce approaching 100,000 team members. It is a whole-person care organization by design and by conviction: the mission is explicit, the ownership structure means no investor is waiting on a distribution, and clinical and operating decisions are made accordingly.

The Kansas City market you would join has served the metro since 1962 and is today the largest health care provider in its county - a 504-bed flagship hospital with more than 3,500 team members and over 1,000 nurses, a Magnet-recognized nursing organization, four emergency locations, fifteen primary and urgent care sites, six physician office buildings, and an integrated home health and hospice enterprise. Recent investment has been substantial rather than symbolic: a $76.5 million cancer institute opened in 2024, and in 2025 the hospital became the first national affiliate of a top-tier academic cancer network.

It is also an organization that measures whether its own people are thriving. It has been named to Glassdoor's Best Places to Work list on the strength of anonymous team member reviews - not a self-nominated application - and to Fortune's Best Workplaces in Health Care, alongside Great Place to Work certification and recognition among the country's most trustworthy companies.

THE LOCATION

Johnson County, Kansas is one of the most consistently well-rated places to live in the country - the county's largest city was ranked the number one Best Place to Live in the United States for 2026, scoring highest in education, health and transportation. Three school districts, all ranked in the state's top five, sit within the service area. The average commute is nineteen minutes. There are more than eighty city parks, a 300-acre arboretum and over one hundred miles of interconnected trail. Kansas City itself is ten miles north - world-class barbecue, a jazz tradition, two championship franchises, the Nelson-Atkins and a genuine arts scene - on a cost base that leaves a leadership salary meaning something at the end of the month. It is a market people move to and stay in.

READY TO MAKE YOUR NEXT MOVE?

This is a confidential search. Contact your recruiting representative directly for a discreet conversation about the role, the organization and next steps. Your inquiry will not be shared with any employer without your explicit consent.

Client identity and full application details will be shared with qualified, vetted candidates.

Our client is an Equal Opportunity Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, age, disability, protected veteran status, genetic information, or any other characteristic protected by applicable federal, state or local law. Reasonable accommodations are available to applicants with disabilities upon request.

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