Senior Medical Director, Patient Safety and Quality

Company

Oak Street Health

Senior Medical Director, Patient Safety and Quality

The Senior Medical Director, Patient Safety and Quality is a senior clinical leader responsible for setting the vision, strategy, and execution of patient safety and clinical quality priorities across Oak Street Health's national primary care network. This role directly manages the Patient Safety team and is accountable for building, sustaining, and continuously advancing a culture of safety, transparency, and high reliability.

The role ensures that safety and quality principles are embedded across care delivery, clinical workflows, and the patient experience, and that improvement efforts are aligned with organizational goals, regulatory requirements, and industry best practices. The role partners closely with clinical, operational, pharmacy, technology, and enterprise safety leaders to reduce harm, standardize safe practices, and improve outcomes at scale.

To maintain strong connection to frontline care and patient experience, the Medical Director provides direct patient care in a primary care setting one to two days per week.

• Directly manage the Patient Safety team and establish organizational priorities for patient safety and quality initiatives.
• Accountable for organizational patient safety and quality performance.
• Build and sustain a culture of safety that promotes transparency, learning, and accountability across the organization.
• Provide national leadership for patient safety and quality strategies, priorities, and programs.
• Align safety and quality initiatives with Oak Street Health's mission, enterprise strategy, regulatory requirements, and industry best practices.
• Partner with EPSO, HCD and Oak Street enterprise safety leadership to align priorities, share learnings, and drive systemwide improvement.
• Embed safety and quality principles into the care model, clinical workflows, team-based practices, and patient experience.

• Serve as Co-Chair of the Clinical Quality Committee, overseeing quality strategy, outcomes measurement and improvement initiatives.
• Serve as Co-Chair of the Safety Committee, overseeing safety strategy, risk mitigation, event learning, and organizational response.
• Collaborate with the Pharmacy & Therapeutics (P&T) Committee to advance medication safety, optimize prescribing, and mitigate risk.
• Partner across nursing, clinical operations and population health to align and advance patient safety and quality initiatives across the organization.
• Partner with enterprise governance bodies to ensure clear accountability, alignment, and execution across committees, markets, and functions.

• Oversee the design, implementation and sustainability of evidence-based safety and quality programs, including medication safety, infection prevention, diagnostic safety, chronic disease management and safe transitions of care.
• Ensure robust systems for incident reporting, case review, learning and resolution.
• Lead or oversee root cause analyses and ensure timely, effective corrective and preventive actions.
• Partner with IT and clinical informatics teams to ensure technology and EMR workflows support patient safety and quality improvement.

• Establish, monitor, and report key safety and quality metrics and dashboards across markets.
• Use data to identify trends, risks, and opportunities for system redesign.
• Drive continuous improvement using methodologies such as PDSA, Lean, or Six Sigma.
• Ensure learnings are translated into sustainable practice change.

• Develop and deliver education for clinicians and care teams on patient safety principles, human factors, and error prevention.
• Engage frontline staff in improvement initiatives and feedback loops.
• Promote multidisciplinary teamwork, effective communication, and safe handoffs across care settings.

• Partner with regulatory, accrediting, and oversight bodies to ensure compliance and readiness.
• Collaborate with payer, community, and enterprise partners to advance safety and quality beyond the clinic.
• Represent Oak Street Health externally as a thought leader in patient safety and quality.

• Physician (MD or DO) or Nurse Practitioner (DNP preferred) with active, unrestricted license.
• Board certification in a primary care specialty (Family Medicine, Internal Medicine or Geriatrics).
• Minimum of 5 years of clinical experience; demonstrated leadership experience in patient safety and/or quality improvement required, including leading programs, teams, or initiatives at scale.
• Strong knowledge of safety science, human factors, and systems-based approaches to care.
• Excellent communication, collaboration and change management skills.

• Reports to the Chief Medical Officer of Oak Street Health
• Works in close partnership with operational leadership, enterprise safety leaders, quality teams, and…