Health Network Director - Department of Public Health

Job Description

SAN FRANCISCO HEALTH NETWORK DIRECTOR (1166-Administrator, Department of Public Health)

Position Overview

Build the future of public health care in San Francisco.

San Francisco has always been a place where public health leads, not follows. The San Francisco Department of Public Health is known nationally for tackling the hardest health challenges, advancing equity, integrating care, and pushing what is possible in a public system.

The San Francisco Health Network drives care delivery across the City’s public health safety-net system, in close partnership with Behavioral Health, Population Health, and other public health divisions. The Network delivers inpatient, primary, specialty, rehabilitation, home-based, and community-based care, bringing care directly to people where they are. Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital is the City’s only Level I Trauma Center, serving residents who rely on San Francisco for timely, high-quality, reliable trauma care. The mandate is to run the Network as one fully integrated health delivery system, where clinics, hospitals, home-based care, and street teams operate as coordinated parts of a single system rather than a collection of separate programs.

We are seeking an impact-driven executive leader energized by that scale.

This is a defining leadership opportunity: to set strategy, drive execution, and deliver measurable results across one of the most complex and influential public health safety-net systems in the country. It calls for a leader who can set a clear system-wide strategy, drive productivity and outcomes across the delivery system, break longstanding silos, and bring the system into a new era that is fully integrated with population health, strengthening performance, improving outcomes, and helping set the national standard for modern public health care delivery.

Role and Scope

The Director of the San Francisco Health Network is the executive leader accountable for care delivery performance across the City’s public health safety-net system, designing, operating, measuring, and improving care across hospitals, clinics, care at home, street teams, and other non-traditional and community-based care settings. This is a system leader: the work is to establish how a network of parts operates together as one integrated system.

This role owns system-level outcomes, including both care delivery performance and population health management. The Director drives improvement in access, throughput and patient flow; quality and safety; patient experience; workforce stability; equitable outcomes; population health results; and long-term financial sustainability.

This is a builder role. The mandate is to turn strategy into results, integrating a complex set of services into one coordinated, high-performing safety-net system with clear priorities, disciplined execution, and transparent performance management. It means breaking longstanding silos, leading multidisciplinary teams with an upstream view of the populations served, and defining how the network’s parts will function together so that operational excellence, productivity, and revenue reinforce one another rather than compete.

The Director:

• Sets the care delivery and population health strategy and drives execution for a fully integrated delivery system through clear goals, metrics, and operating cadence, aligning care delivery, revenue, and population health toward better outcomes
• Integrates care across settings, breaking longstanding silos, reducing fragmentation, and connecting clinics, hospitals, home-based care, HIV services, and street teams to improve outcomes across the continuum
• Uses data and performance insight to manage populations, surface gaps, identify disparities, prioritize interventions, and track results over time
• Leads execution at scale, translating departmental and public health priorities into operational improvements that produce measurable impact
• Aligns workforce strategy with performance goals, partnering with labor and frontline leaders in a unionized environment
• Improves financial sustainability through revenue integrity, productivity, and disciplined resource stewardship, without compromising access, equity, or mission
• Partners for outcomes with Behavioral Health, Population Health, and other divisions serving shared populations
• Builds and leads a strong and integrated team, establishing how the network’s parts operate together as one system and creating a shared culture of operational excellence, effective productivity, and revenue
• Strengthens leaders and breaks silos, with a proven ability to build bridges across divisions, empower growth opportunities for individual leaders, and lead multidisciplinary teams with an upstream, population-level view
• Operates in full public view, reporting clearly on performance, equity, population health outcomes, and results to executive leadership, oversight bodies, and the public

The Director leads a citywide network that includes:

• Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center
• Laguna Honda Hospital and Rehabilitation Center
• A system of 30+ ambulatory care sites, including primary care, specialty care, HIV services, and jail health services
• Health at Home and other home-based care services
• Neighborhood street teams and street medicine delivering community-based care in partnership with other City departments

The work is to operate, integrate, and continuously improve these components as one high-reliability, equity-driven public health safety-net system, with performance and population health outcomes that are measured, improving, and visible.

Why This Role Matters

This role shapes the future of public health care in one of the world’s most dynamic cities.

The impact is real.
The accountability is real.
The opportunity to lead is rare.

For the right leader, this role offers the chance to help define what a premier, modern, and high-performing public health care system can deliver. 

Qualifications

Education: Possession of a master’s degree from an accredited college or university in Hospital Administration, Nursing, Medicine, Public Health Administration, Public Administration, Public Policy, Business Administration, Behavioral Science or a closely related field.

Experience: Requires at least five years of experience as an administrator of a large hospital, public health network, or related organization; or five years of complex health care administrative experience.

License and Certification: May require possession of valid license to practice medicine issued by the State Board of Medical Examiners or another advance level medical or healthcare licensure or certification.

Substitution: Possession of a bachelor’s degree from an accredited college or university in Hospital Administration, Nursing, Public Health Administration, Public Administration, Public Policy, Business Administration, Behavioral Science or a closely related field; and two additional years of qualifying work experience as described above may be substituted for the required master’s degree.

DESIRABLE QUALIFICATIONS

• Senior executive leadership experience in a complex health care delivery system
• Demonstrated success leading large, multi-site organizations through change
• Experience in unionized and publicly governed environments strongly preferred
• Proven ability to drive performance improvement and financial sustainability
• Demonstrated ability to lead complex operations with a strong focus on cost management and revenue optimization
• Proven experience guiding an integrated delivery system to achieve high-quality, coordinated care
• System-level experience running a fully integrated delivery system, spanning care delivery and revenue, population health, and managed care, with a track record of driving better outcomes
• Proven ability to build, lead, and strengthen high-performing, multidisciplinary teams, establishing how a network of parts operates together as one system
• Demonstrated ability to break longstanding silos and build bridges across divisions while empowering growth opportunities for individual leaders
• Skilled at uniting diverse stakeholders and fostering effective collaboration within a matrixed environment
• Proven ability to improve patient outcomes and experience in a safety net setting

VERIFICATION OF EDUCATION AND EXPERIENCE

Every application is reviewed to ensure that you meet the minimum qualifications as listed in the job ad. Review SF Careers Employment Applications for considerations taken when reviewing applications.  

Applicants may be required to submit verification of qualifying education and experience at any point during the recruitment and selection process. If education or experience verification is required, information on how to verify education and experience requirements, including verifying foreign education credits or degree equivalency, can be found at https://careers.sf.gov/knowledge/experience-education/. 

Note: Falsifying one’s education, training, or work experience or attempted deception on the application may result in disqualification for this and future job opportunities with the City and County of San Francisco. 

Additional Information

Additional information regarding Employment with the City and County of San Francisco: 

• Information About the Hiring Process
• Conviction History
• Employee Benefits Overview  
• Equal Employment Opportunity
• Disaster Service Worker
• ADA Accommodation
• Right to Work
• Copies of Application Documents
• Diversity Statement

Where to Apply  

All job applications for the City and County of San Francisco must be submitted through our online portal. Please visit https://careers.sf.gov/ to begin your application process.  

Applicants may be contacted by email about this recruitment. Please consider using a personal email address that you check regularly rather than a work or school account. 

Computers are available for the public (9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. Monday through Friday) to file online applications in the lobby of the Dept. of Human Resources at 1 South Van Ness Avenue, 4th Floor and at the City Career Center at City Hall, 1 Dr. Carlton B. Goodlett Place, Room 110. 

Ensure your application information is accurate, as changes may not be possible after submission. Your first and last name must match your legal ID for verification, and preferred names can be included in parentheses. Use your personal email address, not a shared or work email, to avoid unfixable issues. 

Applicants will receive a confirmation email from [email protected] that their online application has been received in response to every announcement for which they file. Applicants should retain this confirmation email for their records. Failure to receive this email means that the online application was not submitted or received. 

If you have any questions regarding this recruitment or application process, please contact the analyst, Marielle Saldajeno at [email protected] or (628) 271-6820.

We may use text messaging to communicate with you on the phone number provided in your application. By applying, you accept the Trust and Privacy Policy and you may opt out of text messaging anytime. 

The City and County of San Francisco encourages women, minorities and persons with disabilities to apply. Applicants will be considered regardless of their sex, race, age, religion, color, national origin, ancestry, physical disability, mental disability, medical condition (associated with cancer, a history of cancer, or genetic characteristics), HIV/AIDS status, genetic information, marital status, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, gender expression, military and veteran status, or other protected category under the law.