Strategic Services Associate - Hospital Coding

At Duke Health, we're driven by a commitment to compassionate care that changes the lives of patients, their loved ones, and the greater community. No matter where your talents lie, join us and discover how we can advance health together.

Patient Revenue Management Organization

Pursue your passion for caring with the Patient Revenue Management Organization, which is the fully integrated, centralized revenue cycle organization that supports the entire health system in streamlining the revenue cycle. This includes scheduling, registration, coding, billing, and other essential revenue functions for Duke Health.

Duke Nursing Highlights:

• Duke UniversityHealth System is designated as a Magnet organization
• Nurses from each hospital are consistently recognized each year as North Carolina's Great 100 Nurses.
• Duke University Health System was awarded the American Board of Nursing Specialties Award for Nursing Certification Advocacy for being strong advocates of specialty nursing certification.
• Duke University Health System has 6000 + registered nurses
• Quality of Life: Living in the Triangle!
• Relocation Assistance (based on eligibility)

REMOTE POSITION: Monday - Friday (First Shift)

General Description of the Job Class
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-
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
The Strategic Services Associate will be expected to regularly produce:
•    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 

Required Qualifications at this Level
Education:    Bachelors degree in a business or health-related field is required.
 
________________________________________
Experience:    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 Masters being equivalent to two years of experience.

Coding experience is highly Preferred - Preferrable Inpatient. Clinical experience is preferred 
 
________________________________________
Degrees, Licensure, and/or Certification:       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
 
Distinguishing Characteristics of this Level
N/A