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shows how these roles may function when COVID-19 has entered the community or facility. As noted above, the medical director must both lead and collaborate in conjunction with the administrator, director of nursing and infection preventionist. This requires a medical director who is engaged and empowered to fully inhabit this role. Unfortunately, too many nursing homes do not recognize the medical director as an integral part of the leadership team nor, certainly, as an equal member of a crisis response team. In Kotter’s seminal paper on leadership, he notes that “Management is about coping with complexity. Leadership, by contrast, is about coping with change.” Tackling the extreme complexity, the rapidly evolving compendium of information, and the clinical and psychosocial challenges of COVID-19 clearly require an engaged and empowered facility medical director. Having engaged medical directors as part of facilities’ leadership structures is an important benefit during this pandemic and may well have far-reaching positive consequences in the future. The need for the voice of the medical director at all levels of the decision-making process should be both clearly communicated and strongly encouraged to longterm care facilities, public health authorities, regulators, and policymakers.