Position Summary
The Chief Clinical Officer provides strategic clinical leadership and oversight for a growing portfolio of specialized behavioral healthcare treatment facilities and services located throughout multiple states. This position collaborates with corporate and facility-based leaders to drive strategic growth initiatives, improve client access, and ensure successful, high quality program service delivery. Leads clinical infrastructure development, clinical staff education and training, and continuous quality and performance improvement. Provides clinical oversight, ensuring the delivery of clinically excellent, client-centered care throughout the Company.
Leads with Odyssey’s Treatment Philosophy at front of mind, ensuring that clients and families are provided compassionate, individualized, high quality, evidence-based care with a high level of focus on customer service and safety. Consistently models and upholds company values of service, accountability, respect, collaboration, flexibility and integrity.
The ideal candidate for this role is an experienced behavioral healthcare executive with a proven track record of multi-site, multi-state executive level clinical leadership. Additional education, licensure, experience, and position requirements are listed below.
Relationships and Contacts
Within the organization: Maintains frequent and close working relationships with executive leadership throughout the company, facility and network clinical leaders, facility and network operations leaders.
Outside the organization: Initiates and maintains working relationships with payors, referral partners, vendors and clinical partners.
Position Responsibilities
Essential Responsibilities
Clinical Leadership and Strategy
- Serves as a key member of the executive leadership team, contributing to the overall organizational strategy and decision-making processes related to the provision of therapeutic, nursing, medical, dietetic and direct care services.
- Provides strategic clinical leadership for current operations and growth initiatives; ensures all programs meet Odyssey’s service standards for clinical excellence and client-centered care and comply with regulatory standards.
- Participates in due diligence, from a clinical perspective, for potential acquisitions to the Odyssey portfolio; leads post-acquisition clinical integration initiatives.
- Researches, advises and implements new behavioral health service lines and innovative specialty programs; supports best practices and systems throughout Odyssey’s portfolio.
- Leads the design, implementation, and ongoing evaluation of clinical programs, ensuring alignment with Odyssey’s treatment philosophy, values, and strategic objectives.
- Provides leadership to a multi-disciplinary team of clinicians, nurses, dietitians, and support staff, fostering a culture of 5-star service, clinical excellence, ethical practice, continuous quality improvement and safety.
- Develops and implements recruitment, retention, professional development, and internship program initiatives in collaboration with human resources.
- Supports ongoing clinical and leadership development through training plan design, mentorship, and coaching for clinical team members throughout the company.
- Ensures necessary support infrastructure is in place to deliver and maintain a high quality of care.
- Leads the development and implementation of evidence-based treatment protocols and ensure they are applied consistently across all services.
- Collaborates with leadership to continuously refine the organization’s clinical priorities and service delivery models aligned with best practices, organizational resources, and reimbursement scenarios.
- Collaborates with financial and operations leaders to ensure clinical operations remain financially sustainable, participates in budget development and resource allocation.
- Develops and maintains strong relationships with internal and external stakeholders, including community partners, referral sources, payor contacts and regulatory bodies.
Client Care and Clinical Outcomes
- Strives to achieve high levels of client and family satisfaction by ensuring care is responsive, respectful, and aligned with the needs and expectations of clients, families, and clinical partners.
- Collaborates with team members and vendors to accurately track, monitor, and report on the effectiveness of clinical interventions and outcomes, using data to assess program impact and continuously improve care delivery.
- Ensures clinical services are culturally competent and well equip to care for a diverse range of clients.
- Leverages client and family satisfaction and other data to design and refine clinical programs that meet the needs of clients, families, and clinical partners.
- Collaborates with regulatory and compliance to shape policies and procedures, performance improvement plans, risk management plans, and outcome measures.
- Advocates for the adoption and implementation of innovative clinical practices and technology; improving client care, data integrity, and efficiency.
Additional Responsibilities
- Cultivates cross-functional collaboration throughout the network of services ensuring resources, best practices, expertise, and innovation are shared in ways that improve clinical performance.
- Collaborates with human resources and operations teams to ensure clinical and clinical support team members receive ongoing supervision, performance evaluations, competency assessments, training and professional development opportunities.
- Maintains knowledge of emerging research ensuring clinical programs deliver clinically excellent practices.
- Maintains knowledge of changing federal, state, and licensure requirements.
- Conducts regular reviews of key indicators with facility leadership in concert with the Odyssey Leadership Team.
- Attends select national conferences to maintain awareness of emerging best practices.
- Collaborates with Human Resources to curate digital training plans, design and deploy training modules based on operational needs.
- Performs other duties as assigned.
Minimum Requirements
Education and Experience
Requires master’s degree in psychology, social work, or nursing. Must hold an active, unrestricted license in the relevant field (e.g., Licensed Psychologist, Licensed Clinical Social Worker, Registered Nurse, etc). Requires a minimum of 10 years of clinical leadership experience in a behavioral health treatment setting, to include a minimum of 5 years in multi-site executive leadership.
Physical Requirements
- While performing the duties of this job, the employee will be required to communicate with peers, clients, families, other facilities and/or vendors.
- Performs duties that require the employee to sit or remain stationary for extended periods of time.
- Job performance will require the ability to move throughout the building and may require walking around facility grounds.
- While performing the duties of this job, the employee may be required to talk or hear, sit, stand, walk, reach, climb or balance, stoop, kneel, crouch or crawl, taste or smell.
- Performing the duties of this job requires out-of-state and overnight travel.
- Ability to move up to 20 pounds.
Other Requirements
- Position requires incumbent to have a valid driver’s license and acceptable driving history.
Skill Competencies
- Demonstrates exceptional problem solving and analytical skills and the ability to use sound judgement.
- Demonstrates strong leadership and team management skills with the ability to inspire and motivate diverse clinical teams.
- Demonstrates expert knowledge of regulatory standards, accreditation processes, and industry best practices.
- Demonstrates expertise in leveraging technology and data analytics to streamline and scale operations, enhance service delivery, and support strategic decision-making for improved outcomes.
- Demonstrates excellent verbal and written communication skills, while building and maintaining professional relationships.
- Demonstrates a high level of cultural competence-continuously strives to provide client-centered, culturally competent care, recognizes and affirms cultural and linguistic diversity through therapeutic alliances and ongoing professional development.
- Demonstrates the ability to advocates for the needs and interest of clients and families, promoting clinical excellence through improved outcomes, access to care, and service delivery.
- Demonstrates the ability to manage and optimize financial performance, balancing operational efficiency, budgetary constraints, and the delivery of high-quality services.
- Demonstrates the ability to lead and model interdisciplinary and interorganizational collaboration – promoting cross functional collaboration among team members and referral partners to support and enhance clinical service delivery and support.
