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, can