Description

The Medical Director, Clinical Care & Practice Support is an enterprise physician leader responsible for ensuring that clinicians and care teams have the leadership, standards, workflows, tools and support necessary to consistently delivery high-quality, patient focused care. 

Reporting to the Chief Medical Officer (CMO), the Medical Director leads the organization’s distributed Clinical Lead Network and serves as the primary physician partner to Practice Operations. The role translates enterprise clinical strategy into effective frontline practice, identifies barriers to care delivery and works with cross-functional teams to improve provider effectiveness, access, continuity, care delivery and consistency of practice standards across CloseKnit practices. 

The Medical Director serves as the primary enterprise physician leader responsible for supporting how clinical and care teams deliver care in day-to-day practice. 

The role focuses on clinical leadership development, provider engagement, communication, and implementation support while partnering closely with other Medical Directors, operational leaders, and enterprise functions to ensure Clinical Leads and clinicians have the guidance and resources needed to succeed.

This position does not own formal provider performance management, corrective action, compensation, quality oversight, or direct practice operations. Those accountabilities remain with the appropriate Medical Director, committee, operational leader, or enterprise function. This role supports, coaches, coordinates, communicates, facilitates, and escalates through established governance pathways.

Key Responsibilities:

Distributed Clinical Leadership 

· Lead and develop the organization’s distributed network of Clinical Leads.

· Establish clear role expectations, accountability, decision rights, and performance expectations for Clinical Leads. 

· Ensure Clinical Leads effectively support their assigned providers and practices.

· Serve as the primary physician resource for Clinical Leads in their day-to-day leadership responsibilities.

· Establish regular forums for Clinical Leads to share challenges, best practices, emerging issues, and opportunities affecting provider effectiveness and patient care. 

· Coach Clinical Leads in physician leadership, provider engagement, communication, conflict resolution, change management, and practical problem-solving.

· Support onboarding and ongoing development of new Clinical Leads.

· Foster collaboration and alignment among Clinical Leads across practices, markets, and clinical teams.

· In partnership with the CMO, evaluate Clinical Lead coverage and protect leadership time based on provider span, number of practices and practice complexity. 

Provider Engagement & Communication

· Serve as a key liaison among enterprise leadership, Clinical Leads, and frontline physicians and advanced practice providers.

· Support Clinical Leads in responding to provider questions, addressing routine concerns, and identifying the appropriate escalation pathway.

· Facilitate consistent, timely, two-way communication between providers and organizational leadership.

· Promote provider engagement, collaboration, professionalism, and organizational alignment.

· Ensure frontline perspectives and Clinical Lead feedback are surfaced to the appropriate enterprise leaders.

· Support Clinical Leads in communicating organizational changes and maintaining provider engagement during implementation.

 Clinical Care Delivery & Practice Support

· Define and continuously improve the clinical care delivery model in partnership with the CMO and clinical leadership team. 

· Ensure clinicians and care teams have clear expectations, workflows, resources and support to deliver effective and consistent care. 

· Promote consistent clinical practice while preserving provider clinical judgement. 

· Serve as a physician resource for questions related to provider workflows, clinical-practice challenges, and care-team effectiveness.

· Provide clinical and operational input for design of EMR templates/encounter plans/order sets/workflows. 

Enterprise Clinical Implementation & Change Support

· Support implementation of enterprise clinical initiatives, programs, technologies, workflows, and care-model improvements through the Clinical Lead network.

· Facilitate physician and advanced practice provider engagement in organizational priorities.

· Support clear communication of implementation expectations, timelines, and available resources.

· Serve as a physician champion and change-management partner without assuming ownership of operational execution.

· Serve as the physician voice in the evaluation, design, implementation, and optimization of tools that affect clinical practice. 

· Monitor adoption of major care model changes and identify opportunities for improvement. 

· Drive adoption of approved clinical standards through the Clinical Lead Network.

· Identify variations in care and determine whether barriers related to clinical practice, workflow, tools, training or other operational factors.

· Ensure enterprise standards can be operationalized effectively within clinical workflows.

Clinical Governance

· Chair the Clinical Practice & Operations Committee

· Serve as the standing member of the CMO Clinical Leadership Team

· Facilitate discussion of emerging issues, provider concerns, shared challenges, best practices, and implementation needs.

· Promote collaboration, shared learning, and consistent communication among Clinical Leads.

· Ensure timely dissemination of key organizational updates through the Clinical Lead network.

· Recommend opportunities for enterprise support based on themes identified by Clinical Leads.

· Assist the CMO in strengthening the physician leadership structure, culture, and succession pipeline across the organization.

· Clinical Standardization & Care Model Execution 

· Partner with the Medical Directors responsible for Provider Performance & Development; Quality, Safety & Clinical Standards; Population Health; and other clinical functions to translate clinical standards, guidelines, and pathways into day-to-day practice. 

· Support initiatives sponsored by the CMO and enterprise Medical Directors while preserving clear accountability for each function.

· Provide frontline physician leadership perspectives to enterprise planning and decision-making.

· Identify emerging provider and practice needs requiring enterprise attention.

Clinical-Operational Partnership

· In partnership with the CMO, serve as the primary physician partner to practice operations at a market/regional level. 

· Support effective clinical-operational dyads at the POD/Practice Level by supporting Clinical Leads with their operational/clinical roles. 

· Partner with Operations on issues affecting access, scheduling, capacity, staffing models, clinical workflows and patient experience.

· Ensure operational decisions effectively incorporate frontline provider input. 

· Identify systemic clinical-operational barriers and coordinate resolution at an enterprise level. 

· Promote care team models and adoption of new technologies to ensure providers are practicing at the top of their license. 

  Key Partnerships

· Chief Medical Officer

· Distributed Clinical Leads

· Medical Director, Provider Performance & Development

· Medical Director, Quality, Safety & Clinical Standards

· Population Health Leadership

· Practice Operations Leadership

· Clinical innovation & partnerships

· Provider Recruitment, Onboarding & Learning

· Technology, Product & Analytics

· Compliance & Risk Management

Measures of Success

Success in this role should be reflected in: 

· Effectiveness of Clinical Leads and clinical-operational dyads.

· Provider productivity and effectiveness

· Provider ability to effectively deliver the CloseKnit Care Model

· Consistency and reliability of care delivery across CloseKnit practices

· Care team effectiveness and top-of-license practice for providers

· Adoption of enterprise clinical standards and workflows

· Reduction of avoidable provider workflows and administrative burden

· Reduction in unwarranted practice variation

· High provider engagement and experience 

· Clinical quality and patient safety standards

Clinical Practice Requirement

The Medical Director will maintain an active clinical practice to preserve credibility with frontline clinicians and sustain a direct understanding of patient care, provider workflows, and practice-level realities. Approximately 0.40 FTE, or 40% of total role time, will be dedicated to direct clinical care. Scheduling should protect both the clinical and administrative components of the role 

Requirements

  Qualifications

· MD or DO with an active, unrestricted medical license in Maryland and Board Certified in Family or Internal Medicine.

· Significant experience in primary care or a closely related ambulatory care environment.

· Demonstrated experience mentoring, coaching, or leading physicians and advanced practice providers.

· Experience supporting distributed clinical teams, multiple practices, sites, or markets preferred.

· Strong communication, facilitation, relationship-building, conflict-resolution, and change-management skills.

· Demonstrated ability to lead through influence and work effectively in a matrixed organization.

· Ability to identify issues, distinguish ownership, and use appropriate escalation and governance pathways.

· Commitment to physician leadership development, collaboration, accountability, and clinical excellence.

Role Definition:

The Medical Director, Clinical Care & Practice Support is accountable for enabling the distributed Clinical Lead network to function effectively in its daily work. The role provides coaching, coordination, communication, implementation support, and issue escalation while maintaining clear boundaries from the Medical Director responsible for Provider Performance & Development and from leaders accountable for quality, safety, compensation, compliance, and practice operations.