As the hospital’s senior physician executive, the Vice President, Medical Affairs serves as the key liaison between the medical staff, hospital leadership, and the Beacon Health System clinical enterprise, advancing clinical excellence, physician engagement, and the future of care delivery in a complex community hospital environment. In this matrixed leadership role, the Vice President, Medical Affairs partners closely with nursing, operations, case management, quality, service line, and medical group leaders to improve quality, safety, length of stay, patient flow, documentation, and patient experience while ensuring the effective functioning of the organized medical staff. The ideal candidate will bring credibility to influence physicians, the operational insight to improve care delivery, and the executive presence to lead effectively across both local and system priorities.
This position has a matrix reporting relationship with direct reporting to the Chief Clinical Officer, Beacon Health System, and a dotted-line reporting relationship to the President, Elkhart General Hospital. The VPMA works in close partnership with the hospital executive team, employed and independent physicians, advanced practice providers, service line leaders, and system clinical leadership.
MISSION, VALUES and SERVICE GOALS
- MISSION: We deliver outstanding care, inspire health, and connect with heart.
- VALUES: Trust. Respect. Integrity. Compassion.
- SERVICE GOALS: Personally connect. Keep everyone informed. Be on their team.
Medical Staff Leadership and Governance
- Serves as the primary administrative partner to the organized medical staff, Medical Executive Committee, department chairs, section chiefs, and other physician leadership bodies.
- Provides oversight and leadership for medical staff services, credentialing and privileging processes, practitioner onboarding, focused and ongoing professional practice evaluation, peer review, and medical staff policy administration.
- Partners with legal, compliance, and operational leaders to ensure fair, timely, and consistent handling of practitioner concerns, conduct matters, bylaws interpretation, and corrective action processes when needed.
- Promotes a culture of professionalism, accountability, and collegiality across the medical staff and interdisciplinary care teams.
Clinical Quality, Safety, and Regulatory Performance
- Partners with quality, nursing, and operational leaders to define and execute physician-led performance improvement strategies that improve core clinical quality measures, patient safety indicators, infection prevention results, mortality, and reliability of care.
- Leads physician engagement in standardization of evidence-based clinical practice, reduction of unwarranted variation, and adoption of best practices across service lines and care settings.
- Supports readiness for accreditation, licensure, and regulatory surveys and collaborates to address findings, sustain compliance, and strengthen clinical governance.
- Uses data and physician-specific feedback to drive transparency, accountability, and measurable improvement in quality and safety outcomes.
Throughput, Length of Stay, and Care Progression
- Works collaboratively with hospitalists, specialists, nursing, case management, care coordination, social work, and ancillary teams to improve patient flow, discharge efficiency, observation and inpatient utilization, and overall length of stay.
- Champions physician accountability for timely rounding, consult responsiveness, discharge planning, documentation completion, and escalation pathways that support effective care progression.
- Partners with utilization management, clinical documentation integrity, and physician advisor resources to strengthen medical necessity, documentation quality, status accuracy, and payer readiness.
Patient Experience and Service Excellence
- Promotes physician behaviors and care models that improve communication, responsiveness, care coordination, and the overall patient and family experience.
- Partners with patient experience, nursing, and service line leaders to address trends, complaints, grievances, and opportunities for improvement involving physician and advanced practice provider interactions.
- Builds a culture of service accountability consistent with the organization’s mission, values, and service goals.
Physician Alignment, Engagement, and Leadership Development
- Develops trusted relationships with employed and independent physicians and advanced practice providers to strengthen alignment, communication, engagement, and shared accountability for hospital performance.
- Identifies, mentors, and develops physician leaders who can effectively lead committees, service lines, quality initiatives, and strategic growth efforts.
- Facilitates alignment between the hospital, medical group, and system priorities in a matrixed environment with multiple stakeholder groups and decision pathways.
Strategic and Operational Leadership
- Contributes physician leadership and clinical insight to hospital strategy, service line development, capital planning, clinical program growth, capacity planning, and operational decision-making.
- Supports programmatic growth and clinical excellence in high-impact areas such as emergency and trauma services, perioperative services, women’s services, behavioral health, orthopedics, imaging, lab, and other strategic specialties.
- Represents the hospital and Beacon Health System in internal and external forums as appropriate, including governing bodies, clinical committees, physician meetings, and community or professional settings.
SCOPE AND COMPLEXITY
- Leads in a complex, matrixed environment requiring influence, strong partnership skills, and the ability to balance local hospital needs with system priorities.
- Works across multiple physician constituencies, including employed, independent, and contracted providers, while navigating governance, regulatory, quality, operational, and financial considerations.
- Operates in an environment of changing reimbursement, workforce pressures, increased quality transparency, patient expectations, and the need for stronger care coordination across the continuum.
Leadership Competencies
- Drives Results - Consistently achieving results, even under tough circumstances.
- Customer Focus - Building strong customer relationships and delivering customer-centric solutions.
- Instills Trust - Gaining the confidence and trust of others through honesty, integrity, and authenticity.
- Collaborates - Building partnerships and working collaboratively with others to meet shared objectives.
- Communicates Effectively - Developing and delivering multi-mode communications that convey a clear understanding of the unique needs of different audiences.
ORGANIZATIONAL RESPONSIBILITIES
Associate complies with the following organizational requirements:
- Attends and participates in department meetings and is accountable for all information shared.
- Completes mandatory education, annual competencies and department-specific education within established timeframes.
- Completes annual employee health requirements within established timeframes.
- Maintains license/certification, registration in good standing throughout fiscal year.
- Direct patient care providers are required to maintain current BCLS (CPR) and other certifications as required by position/department.
- Consistently utilizes appropriate universal precautions, protective equipment, and ergonomic techniques to protect patient and self.
- Adheres to regulatory agency requirements, survey process and compliance.
- Complies with established organization and department policies.
- Available to work overtime in addition to working additional or other shifts and schedules when required.
QUALIFICATIONS
- Doctor of Medicine (MD) or Doctor of Osteopathic Medicine (DO) from an accredited school of medicine. Advanced degrees such as MBA, MHA, MPH, MMM, or equivalent leadership training or certification in physician leadership, quality improvement, patient safety, utilization management, or clinical informatics preferred.
- Board certification in an appropriate specialty with ability to obtain and maintain unrestricted medical licensure and medical staff membership/privileges, as applicable.
- Minimum of 3 to 5 years of progressive physician leadership experience in a hospital, health system, or complex medical group environment, including responsibility for medical staff affairs, quality, safety, and physician engagement.
- Demonstrated experience leading performance improvement initiatives related to quality outcomes, care variation, throughput, utilization, length of stay, and/or patient experience.
- Strong working knowledge of credentialing, privileging, peer review, physician practice evaluation, accreditation standards, regulatory requirements, and physician-hospital alignment models.
SUCCESS MEASURES
- Improvement in medical staff engagement, physician alignment, and leadership participation.
- Sustained gains in clinical quality, patient safety, and regulatory readiness.
- Measurable improvement in throughput, length of stay, documentation quality, and care progression.
- Improvement in patient experience and physician responsiveness measures.
- Effective partnership across hospital and system leadership to achieve clinical and strategic goals.
- Visible leadership consistent with Beacon values.
Working Conditions
- Works in an office environment.
Physical Demands
- Requires the physical ability and stamina to perform the essential functions of the position.
