Vice Chair for Clinical Operations for the Department of Radiation Oncology, Thomas Jefferson University

Number of Positions In Requisition
1
Job Details
The Department of Radiation Oncology at Sidney Kimmel Medical College, Thomas Jefferson University, seeks an experienced radiation oncologist to serve as Vice Chair for Clinical Operations. This is a senior leadership position that reports directly to the Department Chair and works closely with the Associate VP of Radiation Oncology to lead clinical, operational, and strategic performance across the enterprise.
The Vice Chair serves as the Chair's principal deputy for the clinical enterprise, with accountability for the safety, quality, consistency, and efficiency of radiation oncology care delivered across all Jefferson Health facilities, and for the strategic growth of that enterprise across the regions. The successful candidate will pair credible clinical practice with operational discipline and judgment - standardizing care across a geographically distributed network while identifying and executing the partnerships, programs, and technology investments that expand access to high-quality radiation oncology.
This is a position of unusual scope. Following Jefferson Health's combination with Lehigh Valley Health Network, the radiation oncology enterprise extends from Philadelphia and South Jersey north through the Lehigh Valley and northeastern Pennsylvania. Bringing academic, community, and regional sites across that geography onto common standards of quality, safety, and practice - while respecting the local relationships and referral patterns that sustain each site - is the central work of this role and its principal opportunity for impact.
The role is designed as a working leadership position: the Vice Chair maintains an active clinical practice and remains an engaged member of the academic faculty.

Job Description
Clinical Leadership

Oversee clinical workflows, patient safety, quality metrics, and multidisciplinary program development across the department's radiation oncology facilities.

Provide enterprise physician leadership across the radiation oncology network, partnering with Regional Medical Directors and Site Medical Directors to establish expectations for clinical performance, access, quality, productivity, professionalism, clinical citizenship, and adherence to enterprise standards.

Establish and lead a consistent physician governance structure across the enterprise, including regular engagement with Regional and Site Medical Directors and clear mechanisms for decision-making, escalation, accountability, and dissemination of clinical standards.

• Provide operational oversight of clinical workflows across all Jefferson Health radiation oncology sites - consultation, simulation, planning, treatment delivery, on-treatment management, and survivorship handoff - with an emphasis on timely access and reducing unwarranted variation between sites.

• Serve as the department's physician leader for patient safety: oversee event and near-miss reporting, root cause and common cause analysis, corrective action plans, and closure of the safety loop with frontline staff.

• Define, monitor, and act on the departmental quality dashboard, including time from referral to consultation and from consultation to treatment start, physics and chart-check completion, peer review participation and yield, treatment interruptions and unplanned breaks, on-treatment visit compliance, adverse event and toxicity rates, patient-reported outcomes, and patient experience scores.

• Lead and standardize the departmental peer-review and chart-round structure across sites, including prospective contour and plan reviews.

• Maintain continuous accreditation and regulatory readiness - ASTRO APEx, Commission on Cancer, The Joint Commission, state radiation control programs, and NRC/Agreement State licensure - and lead survey preparation, response, and remediation.

• Develop and maintain evidence-based treatment guidelines, care pathways, and technical standards for contouring, planning, immobilization, image guidance, and dose constraints, and oversee their consistent adoption network-wide.

• Lead multidisciplinary program development in partnership with disease-site leaders in medical oncology, surgical oncology, urology, radiology, pathology, and palliative care - including tumor boards, multidisciplinary clinics, and aligned pathways with the Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center.

• Guide the clinical deployment of advanced technology and techniques across the network - SBRT/SABR, brachytherapy (including HDR and image-guided approaches), adaptive and MR-guided radiotherapy, radiopharmaceutical therapy, and proton referral pathways - including credentialing, competency, and equitable geographic access.

• Partner with medical physics, dosimetry, radiation therapy, nursing, and advanced practice leadership on staffing models, scope of practice, competency assessment, and workflow design.

• Manage clinical capacity: machine utilization, scheduling templates, downtime, and disaster contingency planning, cross-site coverage, and patient transfer protocols.

• Lead post-combination clinical integration of radiation oncology across legacy Jefferson and Lehigh Valley Health Network sites - harmonizing quality and safety standards, peer review, treatment pathways, credentialing, technology standards, and operational metrics into a single accountable system while preserving effective local practice and referral relationships.

• Champion equitable access and consistent quality across the full network - extending academic-standard care, multidisciplinary review, and clinical trial availability to community and regional sites, including those outside the cancer center's formally defined catchment area.

• Develop an enterprise framework for Centers of Excellence and regional specialization, defining which clinical capabilities should be broadly distributed across the network and which highly specialized programs should be concentrated at designated centers based on volume, expertise, technology, quality, access, and academic opportunity.

Administrative Duties

• Assist the Department Chair with clinical operations and strategic planning, serving as the senior physician leader for enterprise clinical operations. Serve as the Chair's principal deputy for clinical operations, representing the Chair in designated operational forums and acting on the Chair's behalf as delegated. Work in dyad partnership with the Associate Vice President of Radiation Oncology to align physician leadership with enterprise operations, finance, workforce, capital planning, and strategic execution.

• Co-led annual departmental strategic planning, operating, and capital budget development, and performance-to-budget review for the clinical enterprise.

• Contribute to clinical workforce planning: physician and advanced practice staffing models, site assignments and coverage, call schedules, recruitment needs, and onboarding of new clinical faculty.

• Help design and administer clinical effort, productivity, and incentive frameworks, and participate with the Chair in faculty performance review, professionalism, and clinical citizenship expectations.

• Oversee clinical informatics supporting operations - the oncology information system, electronic health record integration, scheduling, registries, operational dashboards, and automation or AI-enabled workflow improvement - in coordination with information services and institutional digital health leadership.

• Coordinate with fellow Vice Chairs so that clinical operations enable, rather than compete with, research accrual and trainee education.

• Ensure that enterprise clinical operations create infrastructure that advances the Department's academic mission, including clinical trial accrual, resident and trainee education, prospective data collection, implementation research, and dissemination of clinical innovation across the network.

• Represent the department to the hospital, cancer center, medical school, and enterprise administrative leadership, and serve on relevant institutional operating committees.

Clinical Practice

Provide direct patient care at the Academic Hub in Center City for an expected 2 days per week.

• Maintain an active, high-quality clinical practice across one or more disease sites that align with departmental needs and the candidate's expertise.

• Meet departmental expectations for clinical productivity, documentation timeliness, peer review participation, coverage and call, and patient experience.

• Model the safety, quality, and pathway-adherence standards that the role is responsible for overseeing.

• Maintain active medical licensure, board certification, and hospital privileges at assigned sites.

• Travel regularly to sites across the network, including the Lehigh Valley and northeastern Pennsylvania, as required by operational responsibilities.

5. Academic Contribution

Participate in clinical, translational, or other research, resident education, and departmental, hospital, and medical school committees.

• Participate in clinical, translational, health services, or implementation and operations research, with scholarly output commensurate with academic rank.

• Support clinical trial accrual across the network and work to extend trial access to community and regional sites.

• Teach and mentor residents, fellows, and medical students, including didactic instruction in quality, safety, and health care operations.

• Mentor junior faculty and advanced practice providers in clinical and operational leadership development.

• Serve on departmental, hospital, cancer center, and Sidney Kimmel Medical College committees.

• Maintain engagement with national professional and cooperative group organizations (e.g., ASTRO, ASCO, AACR, ACR, ACRO, ABS, NRG Oncology).

Qualifications
Required

• MD, DO, or MD/PhD degree.

• Board certification in Radiation Oncology by the American Board of Radiology (or board eligible with certification expected within [12] months of appointment).

• Eligibility for unrestricted medical licensure in Pennsylvania and New Jersey.

• Eligibility for faculty appointment at the rank of Associate Professor or Professor at Sidney Kimmel Medical College; rank commensurate with academic record.

• Minimum of [five to seven] years of practice beyond training, including demonstrated formal leadership in clinical operations, quality, or safety (for example, medical director, site director, quality officer, or service line lead).

• Demonstrated experience with quality and safety systems, accreditation processes, and performance metrics in radiation oncology.

• Evidence of effective multidisciplinary collaboration and successful clinical program development.

• Strong communication, negotiation, conflict resolution, and change management skills, with the credibility to lead peers across multiple sites.

Preferred

• Experience leading clinical operations across multiple sites or within an integrated health system network.

• Experience with post-merger or post-affiliation clinical integration - harmonizing standards, metrics, and governance across previously separate organizations.

• Demonstrated effectiveness working with community and regional physicians and hospital leadership, not solely in an academic medical center setting.

• Formal management training (MBA, MHA, MMM, or an executive leadership program) - valued but not required.

• Working knowledge of radiation oncology reimbursement, coding, and alternative payment models.

• Experience with clinical informatics, operational analytics, or AI-enabled workflow improvement.

• Record of peer-reviewed scholarship and participation in cooperative group or investigator-initiated clinical trials.

About the Department and Institution

The Department of Radiation Oncology is a department of Sidney Kimmel Medical College at Thomas Jefferson University and delivers care across the Jefferson Health enterprise. The department maintains an ACGME-accredited residency program, an active clinical trials portfolio, including cooperative group participation, and research programs spanning radiation biology, medical physics, precision oncology, and clinical and digital health investigations.

The Clinical Enterprise

Jefferson Health completed its combination with Lehigh Valley Health Network in August 2024, forming a system of 32 hospitals and more than 700 sites of care across eastern Pennsylvania and southern New Jersey. The radiation oncology clinical enterprise within the scope of this position spans that full geography - from the academic campuses in Philadelphia and the South Jersey sites, north through the Lehigh Valley and northeastern Pennsylvania - and includes academic, community, and regional facilities.

Cancer Center Partnership

Clinical care is delivered in partnership with the Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center, which the National Cancer Institute designated a Comprehensive Cancer Center in April 2024. The Cancer Center's NCI-defined catchment area comprises seven contiguous counties - Philadelphia, Montgomery, Delaware, and Chester in Pennsylvania, and Burlington, Camden, and Gloucester in New Jersey - a population of approximately 6.1 million.

The operational scope of this position extends beyond that formally defined catchment area to the full Jefferson Health radiation oncology network. Reconciling the two - extending comprehensive cancer center standards, multidisciplinary care models, and clinical trial access across a footprint larger than the catchment area itself - is among the defining opportunities of the role.

Compensation and Benefits

Salary and academic rank are commensurate with experience, qualifications, and accomplishments. The position carries an administrative stipend and administrative time. Jefferson offers a comprehensive benefits package including health, d