Nacim Iranmanesh — Healthcare Operations & Chief of Staff

The practice.

Why I do this. And how I think about the work.

I grew up watching my parents do everything right and still get failed by American healthcare. Appointments scheduled wrong, paperwork no one walked them through, jargon that kept them out of their own care. They figured out what they could; I translated the rest. The operational layer where their version of that story plays out, every day, for thousands of other families — that’s what I’ve been working on ever since.

Eleven years in. Hospitals first: Boston Medical Center, Brigham and Women’s, Phoenix Children’s. I learned that compliance and patient safety are operational disciplines, not paperwork. Then digital health: Brightline, Manatee, Receptive. I learned how fast a small team can compound a problem when no one owns the system underneath it.

The work I get hired for is the structural kind — the kind that doesn’t ship in a sprint but shows up in next quarter’s denial rate. Process mapping the team commits to. SOPs that get re-read twelve times. Weekly AR working sessions held until denials stop hiding. Five-whys with people who already gave me three answers they thought I wanted. The work that actually changes outcomes is the durable kind — separating human error from system failure, getting to root cause, and undoing the invisible workarounds people built to survive a broken system.

First-generation American, fluent in Farsi. MPH from Boston University. DHSc from A.T. Still. CPPS since 2018.

What I run.

Domains I own.

Provider operations, end to end

Licensing, credentialing, intake, plus the revenue cycle that runs underneath — verification, denials, AR, vendor integration with Candid, Nirvana, Healthie.

Operating cadence + executive accountability

KPI dashboards, weekly working sessions, OKR reviews, board prep — the operating system underneath the strategy deck.

Cross-functional execution

Translating CEO priorities into shipped work across engineering, clinical, finance, and growth — without losing speed or detail.

Provider rigor in startup environments

CPPS + Just Culture + HRO discipline brought into venture-backed teams without slowing the business.

Selected work.

Diagnosis through delivery, end-to-end.

01 Manatee, Inc. May 2023 — Dec 2025

Rebuilt revenue cycle from a team of one to an accountable operation — through a live EMR migration.

Director, Clinical Operations → Sr. Director of Operations · Pediatric mental health practice

I took over RCM six months into my role, mid-migration from SimplePractice to Healthie — a platform that didn’t support end-to-end RCM out of the box. The work was to turn it into an operation that didn’t depend on one person being there.

single owner navigating growth → end-to-end RCM operation
manual claim correction → Candid rules engine, pre-API
manual VOB at billing → Nirvana real-time eligibility at booking
SimplePractice → Healthie live, with patch systems
no AR review cadence → weekly working session, named denial ownership
clinical operations only → ops + licensing + credentialing

OutcomeHeld denial rate under MGMA benchmark during the migration. Authored the Candid rules engine driving the majority of claims through pre-API auto-correction. Net collection performance materially improved.

Specific financial outcomes withheld per confidentiality. Happy to walk through in conversation.

02 Phoenix Children’s Hospital Feb 2021 — Sep 2024

Built the leadership data and safety infrastructure at Barrow Neurological Institute.

Clinical Quality Improvement Manager · Barrow Neurological Institute

Leadership at Barrow needed a unified data view to scale a pediatric neuro institute responsibly — plus behavioral health capacity and zero-suicide escalation infrastructure.

no unified leadership view → leadership KPI dashboard
limited behavioral health capacity → billable psychiatry + LCSW
informal safety protocols → zero-suicide HRO with no-blame escalation
ad-hoc operating review → weekly review cadence behind the dashboard

Outcome3.5 years embedded with institute leadership. Dashboard, behavioral health workflows, and zero-suicide protocols remained embedded in the operating model after departure.

03 Receptive Health Dec 2025 — May 2026

Chief of Staff across three Receptive Health brands.

Chief of Staff to the CEO · Three-brand consumer health portfolio

Three Receptive Health brands — TNC, ADHD Advisor, and Pettable — were scaling without a shared operating cadence or self-service support layer.

3 brands, no shared cadence → cross-brand operating rhythm
manual follow-up scheduling → auto-booking in the intake flow
no self-service support → 2 Zendesk Help Centers + AI chatbot
no cross-brand provider comms → provider newsletter cadence

OutcomeShipped 4 operating systems across 3 brands during the first quarter of the role.

Selected examples are non-confidential summaries of operating work.

In their words.

From managers, peers, and cross-functional partners who’ve worked alongside me.

“Nacim excels at building process, policy, and data insights — operationalizing systems to improve quality. I’d highly recommend her to build a quality department or team.”

— Lorrie Evans · VP of Care Operations · managed me directly at Brightline
“Nacim brought strong operational acumen across billing and revenue cycle management, plus onboarding, licensing, and credentialing. She streamlined processes, anticipated needs, and supported providers with clarity and consistency.”

— Baaba Onyejiji, M.A., LMFT · Director of Clinical at Manatee · executive leadership team
“As Chief of Staff, she quickly identified opportunities to improve workflows and helped implement automations that made day-to-day operations significantly more efficient. I’d gladly recommend her to any organization looking for a strong operational and strategic leader.”

— Nicole Robinson · Clinical Recruiter at Receptive · cross-functional partner

Eleven years.

Started in hospitals. Moved into digital health. The work has been the same: build systems people don’t have to remember.

Receptive Health

Chief of Staff to the CEO · Remote

Three-brand consumer health portfolio — TNC, ADHD Advisor, Pettable.

Dec 2025 – May 2026
Manatee, Inc.

Sr. Director of Operations · promoted Jul 2024 from Director, Clinical Operations · Remote

May 2023 – Dec 2025
Western Governors University

Subject Matter Expert · MHA Program · Contract · Remote

Nov 2024 – Present
Phoenix Children’s Hospital

Clinical Quality Improvement Manager · Barrow Neurological Institute · Phoenix, AZ

Feb 2021 – Sep 2024
Brightline, Inc.

Sr. Manager, Care Quality · concurrent part-time consulting role alongside Phoenix Children’s · Remote

Apr 2022 – Apr 2023
Brigham and Women’s Hospital

Clinical Pathways PM → Ambulatory Quality & Safety Manager → Program Manager · Boston, MA · 3 promotions

Jun 2017 – Feb 2021
Boston Medical Center

Team Coordinator, Digestive Disorders → Senior Administrative Coordinator, General Internal Medicine · Boston, MA · promoted

Aug 2015 – May 2017

In writing.

Current pushes. Writing on patient safety, operations, and what the work actually looks like.

How I work.

Four principles. Earned, not borrowed.

01

Build teams that can operate without me.

I document workflows, teach the operating logic, and remove single points of failure. The playbook should stay with the team, not live in one person’s head.
02

Build systems people don’t have to remember.

Asking someone to hold a complicated process in their head, day after day, is setting them up to fail. I automate the manual work so the system carries what doesn’t require judgment.
03

Create conditions for early signal.

People surface problems earlier when they trust the system will respond fairly. I build that psychological safety first, because dashboards only matter if the team tells the truth before the metric turns red.
04

Get to the root cause.

I ask why five times. The first answer is the symptom; the real cause is a broken handoff, a missing incentive, unclear ownership, or a system rule that’s no longer working.

What I work with.

Systems, capabilities, and frameworks I lean on. Patient safety is the operating discipline beneath them.

Healthcare platforms

Healthie Candid Nirvana Sohar Health Availity Epic eClinicalWorks SimplePractice

Operations tools

Tableau Zapier Zendesk Asana Jira Smartsheet GSuite

Capabilities

Service Delivery Provider Operations Credentialing Revenue Cycle Management Payer Operations VOB Denials Eligibility

Frameworks

Just Culture HRO NAHQ 8-Domain HIPAA / HITECH Value-Based Care Six Sigma

AI built into how I operate, not bolted on top. Support-center design, drafting, analysis, automation.

What’s earned.

Four credentials. Each one still pulls weight in the work.

Doctor of Health Sciences (DHSc)

A.T. Still University · Leadership & Organizational Behavior

How systems shape behavior. The discipline behind redesigning the system instead of blaming the operator.
Master of Public Health (MPH)

Boston University · Health Policy & Management

Why the system fails the way it fails — and where policy decisions land on the operational floor.
Bachelor of Science, Biology

University of Arizona · Minors in Chemistry & Persian Studies

Clinical literacy to read the chart. Cultural fluency to translate it for the family in the room. The reason I do this work.
Certified Professional in Patient Safety (CPPS)

Earned 2018 · current through July 2027

Just Culture, HRO, root-cause discipline. The operating spine under everything else I run.

Let’s talk.

How to start a real conversation.

The best fits I’ve found started with a real conversation. Send the operations problem you’re sizing up — the role spec too if you’ve written one — and I’ll read for the problem underneath.

I’m best on structural operations problems in healthcare — the kind that don’t ship in a sprint but show up in next quarter’s retention curve, support backlog, or board deck. The kind of work that translates a CEO’s priorities into systems the team can run without them. Titles vary — Chief of Staff, Director or VP of Operations, Head of Service Delivery, Healthcare Operations Lead, or something the company hasn’t named yet. Remote-first.

Less likely to be the right fit for pure task tracking, project coordination on top of a system no one’s allowed to change, or environments where ownership has to stay invisible. The rest of what I do is in the case studies above.

Write to me Book a call Résumé (PDF) LinkedIn

Nacim Iranmanesh.