Sr. Managing Physicist, Radiation Oncology

Job Summary

Utilizes in-depth knowledge of federal, state, and local requirements to establish departmental safety policies and procedures or creates approaches to respond to compliance concerns. Engages cross-functional leaders to co-create corrective action plans when patient treatments do not follow established treatment directives and ensure teams are aware of corrective protocols. Creates protocols for tracking, reporting, investigating, and assessing impact and root-cause analysis of adverse medical events and implements corrective action as necessary. Coordinates feedback between clinicians, physicians, and peer groups to identify operational gaps in treatment planning activities and leads development initiatives. Aligns updates, commissions, and maintenance activities across treatment planning systems with industry standards. Develops operational resources and instructions on treatment delivery and troubleshooting challenges. Ensures teams effectively verify radiation doses and establishes protocols and guidelines. Monitors quality assurance outcomes and works with cross-functional leadership to implement improvements to patient-specific quality assurance programs, based on program metrics. Develops standards for quality testing procedures standards and resolves barriers to recalibration. Aligns technical specifications for new equipment with the learning needs of the workforce across functions, and ensures performance acceptance testing is complete.

Essential Responsibilities

• Creates and advocates for developmental opportunities for others
• Builds collaborative, cross-functional relationships
• Solicits and acts on performance feedback; works with leaders and employees to set goals and provide open feedback and coaching to drive performance improvement
• Pursues professional growth; hires, trains, and develops talent for growth opportunities; strategically evaluates talent for succession planning; sets performance management guidelines and expectations across teams / units
• Oversees implementation, adapts, and stays up to date with organizational change, challenges, feedback, best practices, processes, and industry trends; shares best practices within and across teams
• Fosters open dialogue amongst team members, engages, motivates, and promotes collaboration within and across teams; motivates teams to meet business objectives
• Delegates tasks and decisions as appropriate; provides appropriate support, guidance and scope; encourages development and consideration of options in decision making; fosters access to stakeholders

Management Responsibilities

• Manages designated units or teams by translating business plans into tactical action items
• Oversees the completion of work assignments and identifies opportunities for improvement
• Ensures all policies and procedures are followed
• Partners with key stakeholders and business leaders to ensure products and/or services meet requirements and expectations while aligning with departmental strategies
• Aligns team efforts; builds accountability for and measuring progress in achieving results
• Assumes responsibility for decision making; fosters direct reports to resolve escalated issues as appropriate
• Communicates goals and objectives; incorporates resources, costs, and forecasts into team and unit plans
• Ensures matrixed resources are fulfilling service or performance requirements across reporting lines
• Removes obstacles that impact performance; identifies and addresses improvement opportunities; guides performance and develops contingency plans accordingly; influences teams and units to operate in alignment with operational and business objectives

Contributions to Program Improvement

• Leads collaborative partnerships with local regional and institutional leadership to define and implement strategic plans and procurement initiatives
• Manages relationships with vendor partners to implement strategic plans
• Leveraging knowledge of clinical needs and technical capabilities to identify and implement new technologies and/or improvements to patient-centered programs, or identify areas where patient programs could be modified or improved by technical capability
• Aligning technical specification for new equipment with learning needs of workforce, overseeing the installation of new equipment, and ensuring proper performance acceptance testing is completed after installation
• Reviewing department training content and identifying areas of improvement to ensure staff members are equipped to perform according to standards
• Monitoring industry developments across treatment technologies and/or leading the assessment of new developments in industry standards and technology, conducting clinical research on new developments (e.g., collecting and interpreting data to support conclusions) to inform best practices for improving patient outcomes

Quality Assurance Procedures

• Anticipating quality issues and recommending innovative solutions to senior leaders and departmental directors to voice and implement process improvements that support quality assurance outcomes for treatment modalities
• Overseeing and equips teams with the knowledge and resources needed to perform appropriate technical tests according to community standards, specifications, and tolerances
• Developing and implementing standards for quality testing procedures and tools used across the department and/or disciplines
• Reviews dose calibrations for team members, and makes recommendations on machine requirements to correct the calibration of treatment systems and machines
• Leading the implementation of patient quality assurance programs and patient specific care planning and delivery (e.g., verifying dose calculations and delivery), monitoring program effectiveness, identifying areas for improvement, and working with leadership to implement process improvements

Regulatory and Safety Protocols

• Defining new regulations and protocols, creating approaches to respond to or escalate compliance concerns, and ensuring structures are in place to maintain compliance with changes to federal, state, and local regulatory standards
• Engaging with cross-functional leaders to define corrective actions that address discrepancies between treatment and approved treatment directives, ensuring teams are aware of corrective protocols and engaging with partners to develop strategic planning based on their capability
• Ensuring that corrective actions or protocol changes with departmental staff, are aligned with regulatory updates in response to adverse medical events, addressing concerns with department leadership

Radiation Treatment Delivery Oversight

• Providing consultation, coaching, and guidance to help team members resolve highly complex and rare scenarios
• Creates resources to help team members effectively analyze and troubleshoot challenges, working across leadership to identify and develop sustainable solutions
• Leading the development of inter-disciplinary or regional policies and procedures for treatment delivery and imaging techniques, ensuring patient outcomes are being met
• Overseeing the use and performance of resources used for verifying patient-specific radiation dose distributions, and using expert knowledge to revise standards, guidelines and action levels according to needs
• Establishing and ensuring guidelines of validation for equipment changes reflect strategic needs and identifying and vetting vendor for maintenance, upgrades, and acceptances, aligned with future need
• Implementing methods for troubleshoot and resolving issues and malfunctions that occur during the course of treatment, identifying patterns across root cause to proactively address quality assurance and maintenance needs that improve the future capability physicist work

Radiation Treatment Planning Oversight

• Coordinates between clinicians, physicians, and peer groups to gather patient treatment planning feedback to align strategies or update current initiatives
• Coordinating updates to treatment planning system, maintenance activities, version and infrastructure updates and acceptances to ensure they reflect latest industry changes and maintain alignment across programs
• Developing operational resources and instructions on the use of new technologies, ensuring teams can effectively utilize technologies to perform treatment planning activities
• Acting as a subject matter expert for senior leaders, providers and staff on highly complex and rare treatment planning scenarios to ensure high quality and accurate treatment plan design while ensuring resources are in place (e.g. vendors, external collaborators, SMEs) to drive programmatic improvements