Medical Director, Patient Safety

Headway’s mission is a big one – to build a new mental health care system everyone can access. We’ve built technology that helps people find great therapists with the first software-enabled national network of providers accepting insurance.

1 in 4 people in the US have a treatable mental health condition, but the majority of providers don’t accept insurance, making therapy too expensive for most people. Headway is building a new mental healthcare system that everyone can access by making it easy for therapists to accept insurance and scale their practice.

Headway was founded in 2019. Since then, we’ve grown into a diverse, national network of over 60,000 mental healthcare providers across all 50 states who run their practice on our software and have served over 1 million patients. We’re a Series D company with over $325m in funding from a16z (Andreessen Horowitz), Accel, GV (formerly Google Ventures), Spark Capital, Thrive Capital, Forerunner Ventures and Health Care Service Corporation.

We want your time here to be the most meaningful experience of your career.
Join us, and help change mental healthcare for the better.

We’re seeking a Medical Director, Patient Safety to join our Clinical Strategy team and play a critical role in building a safer, more reliable care experience for Headway’s patients and providers. In this role, you’ll serve as a subject matter expert on clinical risk and patient safety, providing timely, compassionate, and evidence-informed support to both internal teams and our nationwide behavioral health provider network.

You’ll be responsible for responding to high-risk clinical events, developing scalable safety protocols, and coaching providers through complex clinical situations, always with a focus on ethical, high-quality care. You’ll also collaborate cross-functionally with compliance, legal, operations, and product teams to strengthen Headway’s safety infrastructure and continuously improve the provider and patient experience.

This is an ideal role for a licensed clinician with strong clinical judgment, patient safety expertise, and experience in high-acuity or crisis care—whether from a large health system or a fast-paced startup—who is eager to drive systems-level safety improvements in a mission-driven environment.

• Respond to High-Risk Clinical Events:
  Act as a trusted responder for complex and urgent patient safety concerns, providing real-time guidance to providers and internal teams to ensure safe and timely resolution.
• Develop Patient Safety Protocols and Workflows:
  Lead the creation, implementation, and refinement of scalable patient safety processes in partnership with Clinical Operations, Legal, and Compliance.
• Educate and Support Providers:
  Coach and train providers on risk safeguards, documentation best practices, and ethical care delivery to strengthen Headway’s provider network and promote clinical confidence.
• Strengthen Compliance and Risk Mitigation:
  Partner with cross-functional teams to ensure adherence to licensing, regulatory, and ethical standards across the provider network.
• Drive Continuous Quality Improvement:
  Analyze safety trends and root causes, and translate findings into system-level improvements that enhance quality, safety, and provider/patient experience.

• Timely and Effective Response:
  Measured by response time, appropriateness of escalation, and successful resolution of high-risk events.
• Provider Engagement:
  Increased provider confidence and satisfaction in managing safety issues, reflected in training participation and provider feedback.
• Process Adoption:
  Consistent implementation and use of safety protocols across internal teams and provider networks.
• Compliance Outcomes:
  Reduced compliance exceptions and strong performance on regulatory or audit reviews.
• Quality Improvements:
  Demonstrable reductions in repeat safety incidents, improved documentation accuracy, and measurable impact on patient safety indicators.
• You are a physician (MD)– have 5+ years of post-graduate clinical experience as a psychiatrist
• Demonstrated expertise in managing clinical risk or patient safety concerns, including crisis…