[Hiring] Strategic Services Associate @Duke Health

Role Description

Contribute to the achievement of the DUHS mission through the development and leadership of performance improvement activities in the operational and/or clinical arenas. Assure continual compliance with regulations and accreditation standards through monitoring activities and the design and implementation of strategies to enhance compliance.

Duties and Responsibilities of this Level

• Data Analysis & Business Intelligence
  • Perform quantitative and qualitative analyses to support strategic, operational, clinical, and financial decision-making.
  • Develop recurring and ad hoc analyses using internal data sources and external benchmarking resources.
  • Conduct Vizient data pulls and analysis, including benchmarking, utilization, cost, quality, clinical, and operational data as appropriate.
  • Clean, validate, reconcile, and manipulate large datasets to ensure analytical accuracy.
  • Identify trends, outliers, performance gaps, and improvement opportunities.
  • Develop dashboards, reports, scorecards, and executive-ready presentations that translate complex data into clear business insights.
  • Partner with Finance, Decision Support, Clinical Analytics, and other data teams to validate financial and operational results.
  • Establish baseline performance metrics and develop methodologies to measure the impact of improvement initiatives.
  • Support business cases, opportunity assessments, forecasting, and return-on-investment analyses.
• Project Management
  • Serve as project manager or project-management support for strategic and operational improvement initiatives.
  • Develop project charters, workplans, timelines, milestones, and deliverables.
  • Coordinate cross-functional meetings, working sessions, and project teams.
  • Maintain project trackers, action logs, risk/issue logs, and status reporting.
  • Identify project risks, barriers, and dependencies and escalate issues appropriately.
  • Hold project stakeholders accountable for deliverables and timelines.
  • Prepare concise project updates for leadership, including progress against goals, financial impact, key risks, and next steps.
  • Support implementation planning and ensure projects move from analysis and recommendation through execution and sustainment.
• Physician Documentation Initiatives
  • Support initiatives designed to improve the completeness, accuracy, and specificity of physician documentation.
  • Analyze clinical and financial data to identify documentation opportunities and prioritize areas for intervention.
  • Partner with physicians, Clinical Documentation Integrity (CDI), Health Information Management (HIM), Coding, Revenue Cycle, and clinical leadership.
  • Develop physician-specific or service-line-specific analyses to identify documentation trends and opportunities.
  • Assist in creating physician education materials, performance reports, and feedback tools.
  • Track documentation improvement initiatives and quantify associated financial, quality, coding, and operational impacts.
  • Monitor results over time and help develop processes to sustain improvements.
• Margin Improvement Initiatives
  • Support enterprise and service-line margin improvement initiatives through data-driven opportunity identification and project execution.
  • Analyze revenue, expense, utilization, productivity, supply cost, labor, reimbursement, and other financial/operational drivers.
  • Partner with Finance and operational leaders to identify root causes of unfavorable performance.
  • Quantify potential savings, revenue opportunities, and financial impact associated with improvement opportunities.
  • Develop initiative-level tracking to monitor expected versus realized financial benefits.
  • Support initiatives related to labor productivity, supply utilization, purchased services, revenue optimization, clinical variation, throughput, capacity utilization, and other margin drivers.
  • Help operational leaders translate analytical findings into practical improvement actions.
  • Monitor and report results following implementation to ensure benefits are realized and sustained.
• Strategic Planning & Executive Support
  • Conduct research and analysis supporting strategic planning, market assessments, service-line planning, and organizational priorities.
  • Prepare executive presentations, briefing materials, dashboards, and decision-support analyses.
  • Support leadership with rapid-turnaround analyses and special projects.
  • Synthesize information from multiple sources into clear recommendations and courses of action.
  • Maintain a strong understanding of organizational strategy, financial performance, operational priorities, and key performance indicators.

Core Deliverables

• Vizient benchmark and performance analyses
• Executive dashboards and scorecards
• Opportunity assessments and financial analyses
• Project charters and detailed workplans
• Initiative tracking and status reports
• Physician documentation opportunity analyses
• Margin improvement opportunity assessments
• Savings/revenue realization trackers
• Executive presentations and decision-support materials
• Post-implementation performance analysis

Qualifications

• Bachelors degree in a business or health-related field is required.

Requirements

• Minimum of 5 years work experience, including 3 years of experience with significant responsibility for performance/process improvement.
• Experience leading work teams required.
• Experience can be supplemented with Master's degree with a Master's being equivalent to two years of experience.
• Coding experience is highly preferred - preferable inpatient.
• Clinical experience is preferred.
• RHIT/RHIA/CCS - Preferred.

Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities

• Effective written and verbal communication skills.
• Ability to communicate with customers/staff with diverse educational backgrounds.
• Analysis of data and processes for opportunities for improvement.
• Ability to manage numerous diverse projects simultaneously through effective priority setting, efficient use of time, organization.
• Knowledge of accreditation standards and regulations related to health care.
• Attention to detail and accuracy.
• Computer literacy.

Benefits

• Relocation Assistance (based on eligibility)
• REMOTE POSITION: Monday - Friday (First Shift)