Abstract
The role of the medical director in community mental health settings originated in the 1960 coincident with de-institutionalization and the establishment of community mental health centers around the country. Across several decades, the role of the medical director has gone through numerous permutations. Today, while the span of authority and scope of activity varies greatly between organizations, the overall national trend is toward an increasingly central role for physician leadership in community mental health settings. This chapter provides an overview of the history and evolution of the medical director role. It then shifts to outline current model job descriptions at the level of the community mental health center, considering the taxonomy of different types of medical director roles, and outlines key features of the role across different settings. Finally, it links the future direction of the medical director role to larger trends in healthcare.
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Runnels, P.S., Parks, J., Hopper, K., Ranz, J.M. (2022). The Medical Director in Community-Based Mental Healthcare. In: Sowers, W.E., McQuistion, H.L., Ranz, J.M., Feldman, J.M., Runnels, P.S. (eds) Textbook of Community Psychiatry. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-10239-4_55
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