Principal, Safety and Risk Management

About the Role

We're seeking a Principal, Safety and Risk Management to join Headway's Clinical Strategy team and own safety and clinical risk management for our nationwide behavioral health provider network. Behavioral health carries a specific risk profile, including suicide and self-harm risk, violence in the community, medication and controlled substance safety, telehealth crisis management, and handoffs to emergency or higher levels of care. Headway is building the infrastructure to capture and learn from these events. This role is the senior owner who turns that infrastructure into a functioning safety and risk program, and turns what it surfaces into changes in how care is delivered.

You will own the operating system for reported safety events end to end (i.e., intake and triage through investigation, systematic event analysis, corrective action, and case closure) and you will be first to respond when a high-risk clinical event needs immediate attention (e.g., an impaired provider actively seeing patients, adverse patient behavior), providing timely, compassionate, evidence-informed support to providers and internal teams. You will set the standards for the program, including harm severity and care attribution coding, investigation processes, and the escalation paths that get a clinical question to a clinician, an operational question to operations, and a legal question to counsel. You will define what Headway measures, own the clinical event risk dashboard, and produce the metrics, trend analysis, and case narrative behind quarterly reporting to clinical leadership and the board. You will partner with the clinical product pod and bring safety and risk management expertise to product development. You'll work cross-functionally with clinical operations, legal, compliance, and data teams. As the function grows, you will shape how it is staffed and how the work is divided.

This is an ideal role for a patient safety and clinical risk leader with a behavioral health background who has built a patient safety program, whether in a health system or a technology based health environment, and who wants to define a national safety function while it is still being shaped.

You Will

• Own the operating system for reported safety events end to end, including intake and triage through investigation, systematic event analysis, corrective action, and case closure. Build the reporting culture that surfaces events in the first place.

• Partner with the clinical safety team to lead the investigation process in the review of serious events, root cause and apparent cause analyses, defining the investigation standards and reference taxonomy the program uses at scale.

• Convert findings into corrective and preventive actions with named owners and due dates, track every action to verified closure across teams you do not manage, and translate event trends into upstream fixes that prevent future harm.

• Serve as the trusted responder for high-risk clinical events needing immediate attention (e.g., an impaired provider actively seeing patients, adverse patient behavior), providing timely, compassionate, evidence-informed guidance and support to providers and internal teams to ensure proper resolution.

• Build the protocol and policy layer. Draft and maintain patient safety and event management protocols and policy in partnership with Clinical Operations, Legal, and Compliance, so practice is consistent, scalable, and aligned with regulatory and ethical standards.

• Own measurement and the Clinical Risk Dashboard. Define metrics and the baseline safety event rate, and analyze trends in reported events and contributing factors.

• Report to Leadership and the Board. Produce the metrics, trend analysis, and case narrative for the quarterly Quality and Patient Safety Report, and support the Patient Safety Review Committee and peer-led governance committees. Structure investigations to meet regulatory requirements, accreditation standards, and delegated credentialing expectations, and supply the evidence of clinical oversight that payer and accreditation reviews require.

• Build and execute detailed project plans with clinical leadership on new and novel patient safety programs as they arise.

You’d Be a Great Fit If You Have

• Active clinical license as a master’s level therapist (LCSW, LPC, LMFT), doctorate clinical psychologist (PhD/PsyD), psychiatric clinician (PMHNP-BC, MD/DO), or nurse (RN), with 7+ years of experience in healthcare patient safety or clinical risk management, including direct ownership of event investigation and corrective action

• Built or substantially scaled a safety event or clinical risk program. Developing and managing from project plan through launch and scale. You work from established methods and clinical industry standards, and you have set that method for others

• You triage and escalate soundly, and you know a clinical question from an operational or legal one, routing rather than deciding when it is not yours

• You are fluent with data. You can define metrics, read a dashboard critically, interpret trends, and build a plan for deeper analysis

• You drive corrective actions to verified closure across teams you do not manage, including teams that do not yet know how to mitigate the risk in front of them

• You communicate exceptionally well. You document clearly, you can present findings to senior clinical and business leaders who will question them.

• You have a deep commitment to ethical, patient-centered care, and continuous quality improvement

• You are comfortable being the first person in a role, in a program that is growing, and adaptable with new technology

• Certification in Quality and Patient Safety, Healthcare Quality and Management, Healthcare Risk Management, or an equivalent patient safety credential — strongly preferred

Compensation and Benefits:

The expected base pay range for this position is $144,000 - $280,000, based on a variety of factors including qualifications, experience, and geographic location.

Benefits offered include:

• Equity Compensation

• Medical, Dental, and Vision coverage

• HSA / FSA

• 401K

• Work-from-Home Stipend

• Therapy Reimbursement

• 16-week parental leave for eligible employees

• Carrot Fertility annual reimbursement and membership

• Flexible PTO

• Employee Assistance Program (EAP)

• Training and professional development