Site Medical Director- Academic Primary Care

Position Summary

The Site Medical Director (SMD) provides clinical, operational, and administrative leadership for an academic primary care practice that serves as a clinical training site for Family Medicine residents. The SMD is responsible for ensuring high-quality, patient-centered care while supporting the educational mission of the residency program and the operational and financial performance of the practice. The Site Medical Director provides direct leadership and oversight of faculty physicians, resident physicians, and clinical support staff and serves as the primary physician leader responsible for day-to-day clinical operations. The SMD works collaboratively with residency leadership, practice management, nursing/clinical leadership, and health system leadership to optimize patient access, quality, safety, provider productivity, staffing, scheduling, and the clinical learning environment.

Physician and Resident Leadership

The Site Medical Director:

• Provides day-to-day physician leadership for faculty and resident physicians practicing at the site.
• Serves as a primary resource for clinical, operational, professionalism, workflow, and patient-care concerns.
• Promotes accountability for clinical quality, documentation, productivity, access, patient experience, and organizational expectations.
• Identifies and addresses barriers affecting physician and resident performance.
• Supports faculty development, mentorship, onboarding, engagement, and retention.
• Participates in recruitment, interviewing, onboarding, and integration of new faculty physicians.
• Partners with residency leadership regarding resident performance, supervision, clinical responsibilities, and concerns arising within the ambulatory practice.
• Facilitates communication between faculty, residents, support staff, residency leadership, practice administration, and health system leadership.
• Promotes a collaborative culture emphasizing professionalism, psychological safety, accountability, and continuous improvement.

Clinical Support Staff Leadership

In partnership with practice management and nursing/clinical leadership, the Site Medical Director:

• Provides physician leadership and oversight for medical assistants and other clinical support personnel.
• Establishes expectations for clinical workflows, rooming, medication reconciliation, preventive care, inbox management, patient messaging, prior authorizations, referrals, and care coordination.
• Addresses workflow and performance concerns affecting patient care or provider efficiency.
• Participates in staffing decisions and evaluates clinical staffing needs based on patient volume, provider schedules, and practice demands.
• Works to optimize physician-support staff team structures and appropriate delegation of clinical responsibilities.
• Supports staff development, engagement, retention, and recognition.
• Facilitates resolution of concerns involving physicians, residents, and clinical support staff.

Faculty and Resident Scheduling

The Site Medical Director has primary responsibility for development and oversight of the site’s clinical provider schedule, including:

• Developing and maintaining faculty physician clinical schedules.
• Coordinating resident continuity clinic schedules in collaboration with residency leadership.
• Aligning faculty supervision with resident clinic schedules to ensure appropriate supervision and regulatory compliance.
• Managing schedule changes related to vacations, CME, illness, conferences, inpatient responsibilities, educational activities, and other absences.
• Ensuring adequate clinical coverage and continuity during planned and unplanned provider absences.
• Balancing provider availability, resident supervision, patient access, continuity, and operational needs.
• Adjusting templates and clinical capacity based on provider FTE, residency rotations, staffing availability, and patient demand.
• Identifying scheduling inefficiencies and opportunities to improve access and provider utilization.

Paid Time Off and Provider Coverage

The Site Medical Director:

• Reviews and coordinates faculty physician PTO requests.
• Evaluates PTO requests in the context of clinical coverage, resident supervision, patient access, and other faculty absences.
• Maintains equitable and consistent processes for physician time-off requests.
• Coordinates coverage plans for vacations, CME, leave, and unexpected absences.
• Works with administrative leadership regarding PTO balances, carryover, FTE changes, and other provider scheduling considerations.
• Ensures that planned absences do not compromise patient care, resident supervision, or essential practice operations.

Clinical Operations

The Site Medical Director serves as the physician leader for clinical operations and:

• Partners with the Practice Manager to oversee day-to-day practice performance.
• Evaluates provider templates, appointment availability, panel management, patient access, continuity, and clinical capacity.
• Identifies operational bottlenecks and leads implementation of workflow improvements.
• Supports appropriate utilization of physician, APP, nursing, and medical assistant resources.
• Participates in decisions regarding provider FTE, staffing models, clinical space, and resource allocation.
• Develops and standardizes clinical workflows when appropriate.
• Leads or participates in regular faculty and practice meetings.
• Communicates operational and organizational changes to physicians, residents, and staff.

Quality, Patient Safety, and Clinical Performance

The Site Medical Director:

• Promotes evidence-based, high-quality primary care.
• Monitors clinical quality, patient safety, patient experience, access, and provider performance metrics.
• Identifies performance gaps and develops improvement strategies with physicians, residents, staff, and operational leadership.
• Supports population health and preventive care initiatives.
• Reviews significant clinical events, patient complaints, safety concerns, and workflow failures as appropriate.
• Participates in quality improvement and patient safety initiatives.
• Promotes appropriate documentation, coding, risk capture, and clinical practice standards.
• Supports compliance with organizational policies, regulatory requirements, accreditation standards, and residency program requirements.

Academic and Residency Responsibilities

As physician leader of an academic clinical site, the Site Medical Director:

• Maintains a clinical environment that supports both excellent patient care and resident education.
• Ensures adequate faculty supervision and clinical teaching resources for resident continuity clinics.
• Works collaboratively with the Program Director, Associate Program Directors, faculty, and residency coordinators.
• Helps integrate residency educational requirements with practice operational needs.
• Supports resident development in ambulatory medicine, continuity care, population health, quality improvement, practice management, and team-based care.
• Identifies operational or clinical issues affecting the resident learning environment and works with residency leadership to address them.
• Models effective physician leadership, professionalism, interdisciplinary collaboration, and stewardship of healthcare resources.

Financial and Resource Stewardship

In collaboration with administrative leadership, the Site Medical Director:

• Supports responsible management of clinical resources.
• Reviews provider productivity, clinical capacity, patient access, and staffing utilization.
• Participates in discussions regarding provider FTE and recruitment needs.
• Assesses the operational impact of adding or changing physician and staff resources.
• Supports appropriate documentation, coding, and resource utilization.
• Identifies opportunities to improve efficiency while maintaining clinical quality and the educational mission of the practice.
• Participates in strategic planning related to practice growth and development.

Physician Recruitment and Workforce Planning

The Site Medical Director:

• Assesses current and future physician staffing needs.
• Participates in recruitment and interviewing of faculty physicians.
• Provides input regarding provider FTE and clinical capacity.
• Supports onboarding and integration of new physicians into the clinical practice and residency.
• Promotes physician engagement and retention.
• Identifies opportunities for faculty leadership development and succession planning.

Administrative and Organizational Leadership

The Site Medical Director represents the practice and its physicians in interactions with residency, medical group, and health system leadership.

Responsibilities include participation in leadership meetings, communication of organizational priorities to the site, escalation of operational and clinical concerns, implementation of system initiatives, and advocacy for resources necessary to support patient care, physicians, residents, and staff.

The Site Medical Director is expected to function as the primary link between clinical care, residency education, practice operations, and organizational leadership.

Qualifications

• MD or DO degree.
• Board certification in Family Medicine or an appropriate primary care specialty.
• Active and unrestricted medical license.
• Demonstrated experience in physician leadership, clinical operations, or medical education.
• Experience working with resident physicians and graduate medical education preferred.
• Strong interpersonal, communication, conflict-resolution, and organizational skills.
• Ability to lead multidisciplinary teams and manage complex provider and resident scheduling.
• Understanding of quality improvement, patient safety, provider productivity, clinical operations, and healthcare financial principles.

Key Measures of Success

Success in the Site Medical Director role may be evaluated through:

• Clinical quality and patient safety outcomes
• Patient access and continuity
• Patient experience
• Provider productivity and clinical capacity
• Faculty and staff engagement and retention
• Effective faculty and resident scheduling
• Adequacy of resident supervision
• Resident clinical experience and continuity
• Operational efficiency
• Successful recruitment and onboarding
• Effective management of physician PTO and coverage
• Quality improvement performance
• Collaboration between the practice, residency, and health system

Established in 1994, Trinity Health IHA Medical Group is one of the largest multi-specialty medical groups in Michigan delivering more than one million patient visits each year, practicing based on the guiding principle: our family caring for yours. Led by physicians, Trinity Health IHA Medical Group is committed to providing the best care, with the best outcomes for every patient, and exceptional work experience for every provider and employee. Recognized as Metro Detroit’s Top Physician Group by Consumer Reports magazine, Trinity Health IHA Medical Group offers patients from infancy through senior years, access to convenient, quality health care with extended office hours and urgent care services, online patient diagnosis, treatment, and appointment access tools. Trinity Health IHA Medical Group is based in Ann Arbor and employs more than 3,000 staff, including nearly 1,000 providers consisting of physicians, nurse practitioners, physician assistants, care managers, and midwives in more than 150 practice locations across Southeast Michigan.

Here are a few facts about Trinity Health IHA Medical Group to help you understand our impact on the communities we serve in Washtenaw, Livingston, Lenawee, Oakland, and western Wayne Counties: 

• Office Locations: More than 190
• Active Patients: 500,000+ 
• Babies Delivered: 5,612 in FY25 
• Physicians: 900+
• Certified Nurse Practitioners, Certified Physician Assistants & Certified Nurse-Midwives: 370+ 
• Board Certified/Eligible Physicians: 100% 
• Hospital Affiliations: Trinity Health Ann Arbor, Trinity Health Chelsea, Trinity Health Livingston, Trinity Health Oakland, Trinity Health Livonia, Michigan Medicine 
• Support Staff: More than 2,800

MISSION STATEMENT 

Trinity Health IHA Medical Group exists to meet community needs through the provision of personalized, high-quality health and medical services to its patients in a manner which results in high levels of patient satisfaction with clinical quality, services, accessibility, and value. 

Our Values –CARES: 

• Commitment - We strive to provide quality care. 
• Advocacy - We are dedicated to advocating for our patients. 
• Respect - We believe that mutual respect is the foundation of a trusting relationship. 
• Efficiency - We are committed to delivering quality care, advocating for our patients, and fostering respectful relationships while also ensuring care is provided efficiently and cost-effectively. 
• Service - We prioritize service excellence for both our internal and external customers.

A journey through Southeast Michigan leads you to ultra-modern big cities and forward-thinking communities, as well as to charming college towns and rural landscapes. If you're a soul music fan, make sure to add a trip to Detroit to your Southeast Michigan itinerary. A city of culture, gastronomy, and Art Deco architecture, this diverse urban center also boasts plenty of family attractions and recreation areas. Automobile enthusiasts flock to Dearborn to see early Ford models at the enormous museum complex.

There is no better time to visit Detroit and discover a vibrant art and culinary scene, a re-energized entertainment district and a rich history on display at destinations including the Detroit Institute of Arts, Motown and The Henry Ford. Shopping, family attractions and recreation areas, including one of the best bass fishing lakes in the nation, abound in the metro Detroit region.

Trinity Health is one of the largest not-for-profit, faith-based health care systems in the nation. It is a family of 133,000 colleagues and more than 38,900 physicians and clinicians caring for diverse communities across 25 states. Nationally recognized for care and experience, the Trinity Health system includes 92 hospitals, 101 continuing care locations, the second largest PACE program in the country as well as many other health and well-being services. In fiscal year 2025, the Livonia, Michigan-based health system invested $2.9 billion in its communities in the form of charity care, community benefit and other programs and services. 

Our mission: We, Trinity Health, serve together in the spirit of the Gospel as a compassionate and transforming healing presence within our communities. We support this mission by living our core values of Reverence, Commitment to Those Experiencing Poverty, Safety, Justice, Stewardship, and Integrity. Committed to recruiting talented physicians, we are looking for physicians who share our values and want to help us fulfill the health care needs of the communities we serve.

At Trinity Health, we value the physician relationship and focus on partnering with our physicians. Whether you are a practicing physician looking to relocate or a medical resident, we offer opportunities with the flexibility to fit your individual needs. If you would like to be part of Trinity Health, we encourage you to explore more at www.trinity-health.org.