Deputy Medical Director

Are you an experienced clinical leader passionate about improving patient care and shaping the future of general practice? Leeds GP Confederation is seeking a Deputy Medical Director (0.4WTE) to join our senior leadership team. This is a unique opportunity to play a key role in supporting high-quality, safe, and innovative services for over 870,000 people across Leeds. Please note interviews will be held in person w/c 27th April.

Main duties of the job

As Deputy Medical Director, you will work closely with the Medical Director and Board to support clinical governance, patient safety, and quality across the organisation. You will play a central role in enabling colleagues to deliver excellent clinical services, while contributing to the strategic development and growth of the Confederation.

• Support and strengthen clinical governance, safety, and CQC compliance
• Foster an open, inclusive culture where learning and improvement thrive
• Build strong relationships across primary care, PCNs, and wider system partners
• Contribute to service development, innovation, and business growth
• Provide clinical leadership in the development and mobilisation of new services
• Champion quality improvement and support the city-wide research agenda

You are a registered doctor with a current licence to practise and bring significant senior leadership experience within healthcare. You are collaborative, values-driven, and committed to delivering high-quality, safe care.

You will have:

• GMC registration with a licence to practise
• Strong experience in clinical governance, safety, and regulatory compliance
• A track record of working across organisational and system boundaries
• Experience contributing to service development, transformation, or business growth
• Excellent communication and influencing skills

Please note this role is 0.4WTE.

About us

Leeds GP Confederation exists to make a positive difference to the 870,000 people living in Leeds. We are committed to improving general practice and people's health and wellbeing. Through our support, resources, and expertise, we enable GP practices and Primary Care Networks (PCNs) to flourish, collaborate, and provide excellent care for their communities. We are driven to ensure the unified voice of general practice is central to the health and care system and are committed to fostering a culture that is open, inclusive, and focused on continuous improvement.

Job responsibilities

Key Responsibilities:

• Clinical Governance, Safety & Quality: Provide visible, accountable leadership for clinical governance across Leeds GP Confederation, ensuring that robust, effective systems are in place to consistently deliver safe, high-quality care. Hold organisational responsibility for embedding a culture of safety, continuous improvement, and learning, ensuring that quality and patient outcomes are central to all decision-making. Deliver clear assurance to the Committees and Medical Director on the effectiveness of governance, safety, and quality frameworks, proactively identifying risks and driving timely mitigation. Jointly lead on regulatory compliance, ensuring all services not only meet but strive to exceed CQC standards, with a strong focus on preparedness, evidence, and continuous readiness. Maintain strategic oversight of incidents, complaints, and significant events, ensuring thorough investigation, transparent reporting, and demonstrable organisational learning that leads to measurable improvement. Ensure that governance structures, forums, and committees are effective, well-led, and outcome-focused, including chairing key meetings and holding colleagues to account for delivery. Drive the use of data, audit, and insight to monitor performance, identify variation, and implement targeted quality improvement initiatives across services. Act as a senior clinical leader in managing risk, ensuring that patient safety concerns are escalated appropriately and addressed with urgency and rigour.
• Supporting Clinical Delivery: Work alongside operational and clinical leaders to support the effective delivery of services. Enable and support colleagues responsible for managing clinical services, ensuring they are equipped to deliver safe, high-quality care. Provide clinical advice, guidance, and challenge where appropriate to support decision-making and service improvement. Participate in an on-call rota providing clinical and senior management support to Leeds GP Confederation teams.
• Leadership, Culture & Values: Actively promote and contribute to a positive, open culture where staff feel supported to speak up, learn, and improve. Consistently demonstrate and embed Leeds GP Confederation's values and behaviours in all aspects of work, setting the tone for compassionate, inclusive, and collaborative leadership. Support a culture of psychological safety, continuous learning, and shared accountability across teams. Be a visible and approachable leader, available to support teams.
• Stakeholder Engagement & System Leadership: Build and maintain strong relationships with key stakeholders including Primary Care, PCNs, Clinical Directors, the acute trust, mental health trust, community trust, and system partners. Work collaboratively with system leaders to support neighbourhood health models and integrated working across Leeds. Contribute to the development of innovative clinical pathways and new models of care.
• Research & Quality Improvement: Support the development of the integrated research agenda across the city, including developing Leeds GP Confederation's role within research across primary care. Champion quality improvement initiatives across services, ensuring a focus on measurable impact and learning.
• Business Development & Growth: Provide strong clinical input into Leeds GP Confederation's business development and growth agenda. Work closely with the business development and transformation colleagues to shape new opportunities and service models. Support the development, bidding, and mobilisation of new contracts, ensuring clinical quality and safety are embedded from the outset. Contribute to identifying opportunities for service expansion, innovation, and improved patient outcomes.
• Corporate Governance & Board Support: Support the Board in fulfilling its statutory and corporate governance responsibilities. Participate in key committees and attend the Members Council. Contribute to organisational policy development and strategic planning. Act as an active member of internal governance structures, including chairing meetings as required. Provide leadership for the organisation on statutory responsibilities such as safeguarding lead and other lead roles such as Infection Prevention and Control.
• People & Organisational Support: Provide line management to the Associate Director of Clinical Services and other colleagues as needed. Provide support to clinical leadership colleagues. Work in partnership with the HR function to support workforce development, leadership capability, and staff wellbeing. Deputise for the Medical Director and other colleagues as required.
• Information Governance, Safeguarding & Compliance: Ensure adherence to information governance standards, maintaining the highest levels of confidentiality and data protection in line with organisational policy and legal requirements. Promote and support best practice in safeguarding, ensuring policies are understood, implemented, and embedded across services. Maintain up-to-date statutory and mandatory training, and support colleagues to meet compliance requirements. Contribute to a culture of accountability and compliance in relation to governance, safeguarding, and information security.
• Responsibility for staff management: Day to day line management of a team of staff within portfolio in line with Leeds GP Confederation values and behaviours. Be accountable for the service delivery and performance of a team. Undertake staff appraisals and deal effectively with poor performance in line with Leeds GP Confederation policy. Participate in the recruitment and selection of staff. Support and implement workplace induction processes for new staff to ensure that they are aware of all appropriate procedures, policies and information necessary to carry out their role effectively, efficiently and safely. Responsible for monitoring the team's adherence to the organisations mandatory training requirements. Support staff within own team with motivation, development and training. Provide support and expertise to own team members. Mentor colleagues within the team. Deputise for the Medical Director as needed.
• Personal/Professional Development: The post-holder will participate in any training programme implemented by Leeds GP Confederation as part of this employment, such training to include: Completion of all mandatory training; Participation in an annual individual performance review, including taking responsibility for maintaining a record of own personal and/or professional development; Taking responsibility for own development, learning and performance and demonstrating skills and activities to others who are undertaking similar work.

Person Specification

Experience

• Significant senior leadership experience within a healthcare setting.
• Strong experience in clinical governance, patient safety, and CQC compliance.
• Demonstrable experience of working collaboratively across organisational and system boundaries.
• Experience contributing to service development, transformation, or business growth.
• Excellent communication and influencing skills.

Qualifications

• GMC registration with a current licence to practise.

Disclosure and Barring Service Check

This post is subject to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act (Exceptions Order) 1975 and as such it will be necessary for a submission for Disclosure to be made to the Disclosure and Barring Service (formerly known as CRB) to check for any previous criminal convictions.