Head of Behavioral Health

About the Role:

The Head of Behavioral Health serves as the senior clinical leader for Headway’s nationwide behavioral health network, delivering both telehealth and in-person care. This role is responsible for setting and stewarding the organization’s clinical vision, maintaining clinical quality and patient safety, and ensuring a compliant clinical governance infrastructure across all states of operation. In partnership with operational, legal, product, and clinical group leaders, this position ensures safe, evidence-based, compliant care while enabling scalable growth.

The leader oversees clinical policy, provider education, risk management, quality improvement programs, and cross department collaborative structures. They function as the organization’s subject-matter expert in behavioral health standards and regulatory expectations.

Key Responsibilities: 

Clinical Governance & Quality

• Oversee a comprehensive national clinical governance framework, including PC compliance, quality oversight, risk identification/mitigation, and continuous improvement programs.
• Define and implement enterprise wide clinical quality metrics, dashboards, and performance monitoring systems (e.g., outcomes measurement, documentation quality, safety indicators, adherence to practice standards).
• Oversee key governance bodies (e.g., Quality & Safety Committees, Credentialing Committee, Clinical Policy Council).
• Oversee clinical audits, chart reviews, and investigations related to clinical performance or safety concerns.
• Ensure appropriate state-by-state oversight structures, including in-state clinical leadership when required by regulation or payer standards.

Patient Safety & Risk Management

• Develop and operationalize an organization-wide patient safety program, including incident review processes, root-cause analyses, and system-level action plans.
• Serve as clinical decision-maker in escalated high-risk cases or clinical disputes.
• Partner closely with compliance/legal to ensure adherence to CPOM, payer requirements, state practice acts, telehealth regulations, prescribing rules, and emergency protocols.
• Develop and maintain a system of clinical procedures for high-acuity scenarios (e.g., suicidality, psychosis, duty to warn, emergency transfers).

Provider Oversight & Credentialing

• Collaborate with credentialing teams to oversee vetting standards, privileging criteria, and ongoing competency assessments.
• Develop and maintain provider remediation pathways, coaching processes, and disciplinary procedures.
• Oversee state by state compliance adherence for supervision, collaboration, case consultation frameworks, and multistate provider groups.

Clinical Education & Training

• Build and oversee a comprehensive clinical education program, including onboarding, continuing education, and targeted training in designated specific skills (e.g., risk assessments, documentation excellence, CPT coding, evidence-based treatments).
• Direct development of standardized care pathways and clinical guidelines.

Strategic Leadership & Cross-Functional Partnership

• Advise executive leadership on behavioral health strategy, quality initiatives, and clinical implications of business decisions.
• Serve as a key voice in collaboration with other team members partnering with product, engineering, payer contracting, operations, and growth teams to design scalable, safe clinical systems.
• Represent the organization externally with regulators, accreditation bodies, health systems, and payer partners when needed.
• Lead organizational change efforts that advance quality, safety, and integrated behavioral health care.

Qualifications:

Required

• Doctoral degree in a behavioral health field (MD/DO, board certification in Psychiatry).
• Active, unrestricted clinical license in good standing.
• Willing to be licensed in multiple states and PC owner
• 10+ years clinical experience, with significant exposure to community, telehealth, and/or integrated care environments.
• 5+ years leadership experience in a clinical or clinical-operations role in traditional healthcare settings (e.g., medical director, chief of behavioral health, quality leader).
• 3+ years experience leadership experience in a high growth tech environment overseeing clinical or clinical-operations systems around quality and clinical compliance systems at scale.
• Demonstrated expertise in clinical quality systems, safety programs, adverse-event review, and regulatory compliance.
• Strong working knowledge of CPOM, state practice act variations, telehealth prescribing rules, payer credentialing requirements, and documentation standards.
• Experience managing or supervising large, distributed clinical workforces (at least hundreds or thousands of clinicians).
• Proven ability to collaborate cross-functionally with ops, product, engineering, and legal.
• Exceptional communication skills, including ability to brief executives and boards on risk, safety, and quality.

Preferred

• Experience in hybrid telehealth–in-person behavioral health delivery at enterprise scale.
• Background with commercial payer interface and private healthcare delivery systems.
• Familiarity with accreditation standards (URAC, CARF, NCQA) and payer quality programs.
• Experience building clinical education or CME programs.
• Experience with large PC/MSO structures spanning multiple states.
• Prior involvement in EHR or clinical workflow design.

Compensation and Benefits:

The expected base pay range for this position is $390,000 - $468,000, based on a variety of factors including qualifications, experience, and geographic location. In addition to base salary, this role may be eligible for an equity grant, depending on the position and level.

We are committed to offering a comprehensive and competitive total rewards package, including robust health and wellness benefits, retirement savings, and meaningful ownership opportunities through equity. Compensation decisions are made holistically, ensuring fairness and alignment with market benchmarks while recognizing individual contributions and potential.

• Benefits offered include:
• Equity compensation
• Medical, Dental, and Vision coverage
• HSA / FSA
• 401K
• Work-from-Home Stipend
• Therapy Reimbursement
• 16-week parental leave for eligible employees
• Carrot Fertility annual reimbursement and membership
• 13 paid holidays each year as well as a Holiday Break during the week between December 25th and December 31st
• Flexible PTO
• Employee Assistance Program (EAP)
• Training and professional development