Clinical Director Job Description Template

The credential your program's regulator actually attaches to the seat.

Start from who licenses your program — not from a licence list copied off another posting.

There is no federal rule requiring a "clinical director" at a community mental health or SUD program; the requirement comes from your state's program-licensing rule, and the six state rules read for this guide point in different directions.

Louisiana requires a licensed clinical director for mental health programs — a current, unrestricted Louisiana licence (LAC 48:I §5683(B), 2022 compilation; the cross-referenced qualification rule names licensed psychiatrists, psychologists, clinical social workers, LPCs or LMFTs with at least two years of qualifying experience treating psychiatric disorders).

Florida's SUD rule treats a clinical director as a clinical supervisor (Fla.

Admin.

Code 65D-30.002(16): "For the purposes of this rule chapter a Clinical Director is considered a Clinical Supervisor"), and a clinical supervisor must meet the "qualified professional" definition in Fla.

Stat. §397.311 — a physician or PA, a professional licensed under ch. 490 or 491, an APRN, or a person certified through a department-recognized certification process for substance abuse treatment services holding at least a bachelor's degree, with a person who holds another state's recognized certification at the time they are employed by a licensed Florida substance abuse provider allowed to perform the functions if they meet Florida certification within a year of employment — so a licence is not the only route there.

Pennsylvania and Minnesota set degree-and-experience director posts with no licence at all (28 Pa.

Code §704.5; Minn.

Stat.

245G.11).

These are six examples, not a national map — read the current rule of the agency that licenses your program before you write the requirements, and then name exactly what it requires.

What does a clinical director do? walks through each state example in detail.

Which post you are hiring — and the physician posts it must not replace.

The title points in different directions depending on who regulates you.

In a psychiatric hospital, the clinical director is a physician: Medicare's conditions of participation require inpatient psychiatric services to be under the supervision of "a clinical director, service chief, or equivalent" who meets the training and experience requirements for examination by the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology or the American Osteopathic Board of Neurology and Psychiatry (42 CFR 482.62(b)) — if that is your program, say so in the first line.

An opioid treatment program is the opposite: federal OTP rules require a program sponsor, who "need not be a licensed physician," and a medical director — an actively licensed physician responsible for "all medical and behavioral health services provided by the program" (42 CFR 8.2) — and they create no clinical-director post at all.

The SAMHSA CCBHC certification criteria (2023, updated August 2025) require a management team of "a CEO or equivalent/Project Director and a psychiatrist as Medical Director," with a prescriber fallback only after reasonable efforts to find a psychiatrist.

A therapist-licensed clinical director is your own layer on top of these posts — hiring one fills none of them, and the posting should never imply it does.

Supervision, spelled out.

State whom the director supervises and in what numbers, whether they are the supervisor of record for staff working toward licensure — CCBHC criterion 1.b.1 requires that staff "working toward licensure" be supervised "in accordance with applicable state laws" — and whether supervision is itself credentialed in your state.

Kentucky requires its clinical services supervisor to complete twelve hours of specialized clinical-supervision training within six months of taking the post (908 KAR 1:370 §10(1)(a)), and Oregon credentials SUD clinical supervisors through certification or licence routes with experience minimums (OAR 309-018-0125).

Where the state splits management from clinical leadership, say which post you are hiring: Pennsylvania requires "a full-time clinical supervisor for every eight full-time counselors or counselor assistants, or both" alongside director posts that need no licence (28 Pa.

Code §§704.5–704.6), and Minnesota separates its treatment director from its counselor supervisor the same way.

Program-type duties that change the posting.

If your program serves clients with co-occurring conditions, the fourth edition of The ASAM Criteria sets the expectation that "all programs will be co-occurring capable," with at least one staff member qualified to assess and triage mental health conditions — an accreditation-side expectation ASAM sets, not a law, unless your state or a payer adopts it.

If your program is covered by 42 CFR Part 2, the director owns a consent-and-records regime whose 2024 rewrite has applied since February 16, 2026.

And everywhere, credential currency is part of the job: federal OTP rules put it plainly — "All practitioners and other licensed/certified health care providers, including counselors, must comply with the credentialing and maintenance of licensure and/or certification requirements of their respective professions" (42 CFR 8.12(d)).

The pay model, inside the legal lines.

State the structure — salary, or salary plus productivity incentive — and the range, anchored where you can.

Two named anchors, neither a clinical-director count: BLS OEWS May 2025 puts the median for SOC 11-9111, medical and health services managers — the closest occupation, and a proxy spanning health-services management in every industry — at $123,860 nationally, with the middle half between $94,700 and $166,100; where a rule requires a psychiatrist to hold the seat, the relevant series is psychiatrists (SOC 29-1223), median $281,870.

The salary-basis rule is general, not licence-specific: a director classified exempt must be paid at least $684 a week on a salary basis, under the thresholds DOL restored in May 2026, and the exception to that salary requirement (29 CFR 541.304) belongs to physicians — whether a nurse practitioner falls under it is not established, so do not assume it either way.

Exemption also turns on duties: a director hired on the degree-and-experience or certification routes your state allows must still fit an exemption's duties test — bachelor's-level behavioral-health roles generally fail the learned-professional test — so have counsel classify the seat for the post and credential you are actually hiring.

Verify the credential at its source, in the form the rule names.

A licence is checked on the issuing state board's lookup — current, unrestricted, in your state, at the tier the rule requires; a certification is verified with the certifying body, along with the hour counts behind it; a degree-and-experience seat is documented from transcripts and employment history.

Record the date, who checked and the result.

If your program bills federal health care programs, screen the hire against the OIG's LEIE exclusion list too: no statute requires the check, but the ban on employing an excluded person in federally paid work is law and OIG updates the list monthly; see hiring compliance: license verification and exclusion checks.

If your program type has a required physician or psychiatrist post, confirm it separately.

An OTP's medical director must be an actively licensed physician in the program's jurisdiction (42 CFR 8.2); a CCBHC's management team must include a psychiatrist Medical Director unless the prescriber fallback applies; a psychiatric hospital's clinical director must meet psychiatrist-level training and experience requirements (42 CFR 482.62(b)).

Hiring the clinical director fills none of these.

Map the seat's rules in month one.

List every rule that names a director, supervisor, sponsor or program-director post in your program type and attach the credential each requires — note that the "part 2 program director" in 42 CFR 2.11 is a defined term for the person answerable for a Part 2 program, not a clinical-licence requirement.

If your program is covered by 42 CFR Part 2, your director now owns a rule that has applied since February 16, 2026: single consent for treatment-payment-operations disclosures, separate consent for SUD counseling notes, and HIPAA's breach-notification provisions — 42 CFR Part 2, explained covers each piece.

Accreditation is voluntary unless a payer or your state ties it to funding or licensure — SAMHSA requires OTP accreditation by an approved body (42 CFR 8.11), and The Joint Commission alone accredits more than 4,300 behavioral health organizations — but what a specific accreditor's manual requires of a clinical director is not public; ask the accreditor directly.

This page is career and hiring information, not legal or clinical advice, and it is not for someone seeking treatment — confirm the seat's requirements with the agency that licenses your program, exclusion-screening practice with counsel, and pay classification with an employment attorney.