How To Become A Clinic Physician Director: What It Is and Career Path

What is a clinic physician director and how to become one

Updated January 8, 2025

4 min read

Most medical care facilities, especially clinics, have physician directors who oversee the facility's operations. Although your responsibilities' specifics may vary depending on the type of health care your clinic offers, your general duties will include managing clinical compliance, the quality of patient care, and the physicians' education in your facility.

You'll also be accountable for maintaining other medical personnel's professional development at your facility through clinical practices. Those practices will vary depending on your type of facility and medical discipline, but everyone working under you will see you as the team leader.

Along with the rest of the physicians and nurses on your team, you'll work to ensure credentialing compliance. Besides, you might be overseeing billing, collections, and coding for the practices and hospital-based physicians. By doing so, you would definitely make a fair amount of money. The average pay for this role would be around $225,053.

ScoreClinic Physician DirectorUS Average

Salary

10.0

Avg. Salary $196,939

Avg. Salary $59,228

Stability level

9.2

Growth rate 7%

Growth rate 0.3%

Diversity

1.7

Race

American Indian and Alaska Native 0.16%

Asian 18.42%

Black or African American 5.27%

Hispanic or Latino 10.05%

Unknown 4.50%

White 61.59%

Gender

female 59.56%

male 40.44%

Age - 48

Race

American Indian and Alaska Native 3.00%

Asian 7.00%

Black or African American 14.00%

Hispanic or Latino 19.00%

White 57.00%

Gender

female 47.00%

male 53.00%

Age - 48

Stress level

9.2

Stress level is very high

7.1 - high

Complexity level

9.5

Complexity level is advanced

7 - challenging

Work life balance

9.1

Work life balance is excellent

6.4 - fair

Key steps to become a clinic physician director

Explore clinic physician director education requirements

Most common clinic physician director degrees

Bachelor's

52.4 %

Doctorate

14.9 %

Master's

13.5 %

Start to develop specific clinic physician director skills

Skills	Percentages
Patients	26.98%
Primary Care	10.44%
Patient Care	8.82%
Internal Medicine	6.53%
Family Practice	6.28%

Complete relevant clinic physician director training and internships

Accountants spend an average of 1-3 months on post-employment, on-the-job training. New clinic physician directors learn the skills and techniques required for their job and employer during this time. The chart below shows how long it takes to gain competency as a clinic physician director based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data and data from real clinic physician director resumes.

Research clinic physician director duties and responsibilities

Manage and oversee tuberculosis surveillance and clinic operations.
Organize and execute system sponsor CME programs to increase referrals to a specific surgeon or service line.
Understand hospital and physician Medicare and Medicaid billing and coding.
Create an EMR profiling tool for RFP and selection of EMR products for medical practices.

Get clinic physician director experience

Generally, it takes 2-4 years to become a clinic physician director. The most common roles before becoming a clinic physician director include physician, medical director team lead and practice manager.

Prepare your clinic physician director resume

When your background is strong enough, you can start writing your clinic physician director resume.

You can use Zippia's AI resume builder to make the resume writing process easier while also making sure that you include key information that hiring managers expect to see on a clinic physician director resume. You'll find resume tips and examples of skills, responsibilities, and summaries, all provided by Zippi, your career sidekick.

Choose from 10+ customizable clinic physician director resume templates

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