Tufts Medical Center

Chief Medical Officer

Tufts Medical Center, the flagship academic medical center of Tufts Medicine, is seeking an accomplished physician executive to serve as its next Chief Medical Officer (CMO). As a key member of the executive leadership team, the CMO will play a central role in advancing clinical excellence and strengthening the systems, standards, and partnerships that support exceptional patient care. This leader will work closely with physician, nursing, operational, and academic leaders to foster greater alignment, accountability, and consistency across the medical center.

Tufts Medical Center is a Magnet-recognized academic medical center and principal teaching hospital of Tufts University School of Medicine, known for its commitment to clinical excellence, innovation, and exceptional patient care. The ideal Chief Medical Officer will help build a more disciplined quality infrastructure, improve benchmark performance, and elevate outcomes across CMS and Vizient measures. This opportunity comes at an important point in Tufts Medical Center’s evolution. With a highly committed workforce, deeply engaged physicians, and strong executive support for transformation, the organization is well positioned to build the next generation of its quality, safety, and physician leadership infrastructure. The incoming CMO will have a unique opportunity to shape a more rigorous, data-informed, and accountable approach to clinical performance, creating the conditions for sustained improvement and stronger collaboration across the medical center, faculty practice, and broader Tufts Medicine enterprise. 

Key Responsibilities

Quality and Safety Leadership

• Designs, implements, and oversees a consistent operating model for quality and patient safety across Tufts Medical Center.
• Establishes clear clinical standards, expectations for performance, and standardized processes to improve reliability and reduce variation in care delivery.
• Builds and operationalizes dashboards and reporting to improve transparency of clinical performance and support data-driven decision making.
• Ensures that quality and safety efforts translate into sustained changes in physician behavior and clinical practice, not episodic improvement, with a focus on key outcomes such as mortality, hospital-acquired infections, and other priority quality metrics.
• Defines and advances a structured approach to quality improvement, including standard work, performance evaluation, and improvement methodologies.
• Improves the organization’s ability to identify, prioritize, and sustain improvements through consistent processes and leadership discipline.
• Brings contemporary, evidence-based best practices to the organization in support of improving outcomes, as well as driving performance in publicly reported data and forums (i.e. CMS, Leapfrog, Vizient)
• Serves as the visible, exemplar and thought-leader of quality and safety work for Tufts Medical Center and the broader system.  
• Establishes, develops and enhances (where appropriate) Tufts Medical Center quality resources, including people and data

Medical Staff Leadership

• Serves as the primary physician leader for medical staff oversight, including peer review, FPPE/OPPE, privileging, credentialing, and physician conduct.
• Drives a more consistent and contemporary approach to physician accountability, professionalism, and performance management.
• Leads direct physician engagement on performance issues, including difficult conversations to reinforce expectations and standards of care.
• Strengthens processes and expectations around physician oversight to ensure alignment with clinical quality and safety priorities.

Enterprise-Wide Clinical Leadership

• Partners with department chairs and physician leaders to establish consistent frameworks for quality and clinical performance across departments.
• Mobilizes and engages chairs to move from independent, department-driven efforts to a coordinated, medical center-wide approach.
• Aligns clinical priorities, improvement efforts, and expectations across departments to support consistent execution and accountability.
• Works closely with the Chief Nursing Officer, Chief Physician Executive, and senior administrative leaders to strengthen alignment across clinical leadership.
• Enhances collaboration across physician, nursing, and operational leadership, with a focus on clarifying ownership of quality and clinical priorities.

Communication, Engagement and Change Leadership

• Collaborates with clinical leaders across Tufts Medicine to promote more consistent approaches to quality, safety, and medical affairs.
• Elevates the physician voice in quality and safety and supports more balanced leadership across disciplines.
• Frames quality and safety issues in a clear, practical way for executive and board leaders to support informed decision making and accountability.
• Brings clarity to how clinical performance is managed by establishing repeatable frameworks for evaluating and improving outcomes.
• Contributes to the maturation of system-level clinical infrastructure in the absence of a formal system CMO structure.
• Helps drive greater alignment across entities while maintaining primary accountability for Tufts Medical Center performance.
• Strengthen partnership and coordination between the medical center, faculty practice, and academic enterprise in partnership with the Dean and Chief Physician Executive.
• Supports greater engagement of faculty and physician leaders in quality, safety, and clinical performance initiatives.
• Ensures that clinical performance expectations are consistently reflected across both academic and clinical environments.

Professional and Education Qualifications

• Minimum of 10 years of progressive clinical leadership experience, including senior physician executive roles within an academic medical center or complex health system environment.
• Demonstrated experience leading quality and patient safety programs, including building infrastructure, establishing standard work, and driving measurable improvements in outcomes and clinical performance.
• MD or DO degree required.
• Eligibility for medical licensure in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts required.
• Demonstrated involvement in academic medicine strongly preferred, including faculty appointment or prior experience working within an academic medical center environment.
• Advanced degree (e.g., MPH, MBA, MHA, or equivalent) preferred but not required.

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Korn Ferry shall provide equal employment opportunity to all qualified candidates, and will refer candidates without regard to race, color, religion, national origin, sex, age, disability, veteran status or any other legally protected basis. Artificial Intelligence tools may be used in connection with the recruitment process for this position.