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

Position Summary

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.