Engineer

Product Owner – Cost Accounting, Continuous Improvement, and Episode Analytics

Position Summary

The Product Owner for Cost Accounting, Continuous Improvement, and Episode Analytics will be responsible for driving adoption, optimization, and ongoing enhancement of Strata and related financial planning, cost accounting, and analytics capabilities. This role will serve as the bridge between Finance, Operations, Clinical leadership, IT, and vendor partners to ensure the platform supports accurate costing, budgeting, reporting, episode-based analytics, and continuous improvement across the organization.

The role requires strong hands-on knowledge of healthcare finance operations, cost accounting concepts, analytics, business process improvement, and product ownership. The Product Owner will be accountable for translating business needs into clear requirements, prioritizing enhancements, supporting implementation, validating outputs, and ensuring the solution continues to mature based on organizational needs.

Key Responsibilities

Product Ownership and Strategy

• Serve as the product owner for Strata capabilities related to cost accounting, continuous improvement, and episode analytics.
• Develop and maintain the product roadmap in partnership with Finance, Operations, Clinical leadership, IT, and vendor teams.
• Translate business priorities into actionable requirements, user stories, acceptance criteria, and implementation plans.
• Prioritize enhancements, defects, reporting needs, and optimization requests based on business value, operational impact, and leadership priorities.
• Ensure the platform supports enterprise budgeting, cost accounting, service line reporting, and performance improvement goals.

Cost Accounting and Financial Analytics

• Support the design, validation, and ongoing optimization of cost accounting methodologies within Strata.
• Partner with Finance and operational leaders to ensure cost allocation, natural accounts, inter-entity accounts, departments, cost centers, and service lines are appropriately represented.
• Validate costing outputs, reporting logic, and data mappings to ensure accuracy and business usability.
• Support use cases related to profitability, margin analysis, service line performance, department-level cost analysis, and operational benchmarking.
• Identify gaps in current cost accounting processes and recommend scalable improvements.

Episode Analytics

• Lead the development and refinement of episode analytics capabilities to support clinical, operational, and financial decision-making.
• Partner with clinical, finance, and analytics teams to define episode groupings, cost drivers, variation opportunities, and performance measures.
• Support reporting and analysis for episodes of care, bundled payment models, clinical variation, utilization patterns, and cost improvement opportunities.
• Ensure episode analytics outputs are actionable, trusted, and aligned with leadership decision-making needs.

Continuous Improvement

• Identify opportunities to improve Strata workflows, reporting, adoption, data quality, and governance.
• Drive continuous improvement initiatives across budgeting, planning, cost accounting, analytics, and reporting processes.
• Standardize processes where possible and reduce manual workarounds, duplicate reporting, and inconsistent data interpretation.
• Establish feedback loops with users to capture issues, improvement opportunities, and training needs.
• Partner with stakeholders to measure adoption, usage, and business value delivered through the platform.

Implementation, Support, and Governance

• Lead requirements gathering, design sessions, testing, validation, and rollout activities for new capabilities or enhancements.
• Coordinate with IT, Finance, vendor resources, and operational users to resolve issues and ensure successful delivery.
• Support user acceptance testing, defect triage, release readiness, and post-go-live stabilization.
• Establish governance processes for intake, prioritization, approvals, change control, documentation, and communication.
• Maintain clear documentation of business rules, workflows, reporting logic, data definitions, and decision points.

Stakeholder Engagement and Training

• Partner closely with Finance, Operations, Clinical leadership, IT, and executive stakeholders to align priorities and expectations.
• Communicate product updates, risks, decisions, and dependencies clearly and proactively.
• Support training, user education, adoption planning, and change management.
• Serve as a trusted advisor to business users and help translate technical or financial concepts into operationally meaningful insights.

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Finance, Accounting, Healthcare Administration, Business, Information Systems, Analytics, or related field.
• Strong experience with healthcare finance, cost accounting, budgeting, financial planning, or performance analytics.
• Experience supporting or owning enterprise financial systems, preferably Strata or similar healthcare planning/cost accounting platforms.
• Strong understanding of healthcare cost centers, departments, service lines, natural accounts, inter-entity accounts, allocations, and financial reporting structures.
• Experience gathering requirements, writing user stories, supporting testing, and managing product or system enhancements.
• Strong analytical, problem-solving, documentation, and stakeholder management skills.
• Ability to work across Finance, Operations, Clinical, IT, and vendor teams.

Preferred Qualifications

• Hands-on experience with StrataJazz, Strata Decision Technology, or similar healthcare financial planning and analytics platforms.
• Experience with episode analytics, service line analytics, bundled payment analysis, clinical variation analysis, or cost-of-care reporting.
• Experience in an academic medical center, large health system, or complex healthcare organization.
• Product owner, project management, Lean, Six Sigma, Agile, or process improvement experience.
• Familiarity with data integration, reporting dashboards, data validation, and analytics governance.

Key Competencies

• Healthcare financial acumen
• Product ownership and roadmap management
• Cost accounting and budgeting expertise
• Episode analytics and performance improvement mindset
• Strong requirements gathering and documentation
• Cross-functional leadership
• Data validation and issue resolution
• Change management and user adoption
• Executive communication and stakeholder alignment

Success Measures

• Improved adoption and effective use of Strata capabilities across Finance and Operations.
• Accurate and trusted cost accounting and episode analytics outputs.
• Reduced manual workarounds and improved standardization of financial processes.
• Clear governance for enhancement requests, defects, reporting needs, and platform changes.
• Timely delivery of prioritized improvements and business-critical capabilities.