Healthcare Economics Strategist - Remote within AZ

Awarded a Healthiest Employer, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Arizona aims to fulfill its mission to inspire health and make it easy. BCBSAZ offers a variety of health insurance products and services to meet the diverse needs of individuals, families, and small and large businesses as well as providing information and tools to help individuals make better health decisions.

This remote work opportunity requires residency, and work to be performed, within the State of Arizona.

Blue Cross Blue Shield of Arizona (BCBSAZ) is urgently hiring a full-time MedCost Strategist to lead the development of medical and pharmacy trend analysis, cost reporting, complex data visualization, vendor performance, and related savings analysis.

In your role as MedCost Strategist, you’ll work closely with our Analytics & Data Science team, Actuarial Services, and Finance department to create reporting and analytical insights related to unit cost and utilization. Leveraging your healthcare or health industry experience, you’ll play a pivotal role in identifying opportunities to reduce cost while increasing quality of care and member value proposition.

What to Expect

As you work to help us improve the quality of life for Arizonans, expect to thrive in an energetic, diverse environment, championed by an organization consistently named a Best Places to Work and Most Admired Company in Arizona.

This remote work opportunity requires residency, and work to be performed, within the State of Arizona.

Inspiring Health in Arizona Starts with You

Our benefits support work-life balance and the flexibility you need to be your best.

They include:

• Remote, in-office, and hybrid work options within the state of Arizona
• Eleven (11) paid holidays, including a floating holiday you can use any time you wish
• Accrued paid time off (up to 16 days per calendar year)
• Comprehensive medical, dental, and vision coverage
• 401(k) up to 5% dollar-per-dollar match, 2% non-elective employer contribution
• Up to 12% annual bonus based on corporate goals and individual performance
• Eight (8) paid volunteer hours to support our mission of inspiring health
• Tuition reimbursement for you; scholarship opportunities for your children
• Employee discounts, gym reimbursement, and wellness programs
• Treadmill desks, full-service fitness center, onsite cafeterias
• Ongoing training for employees who wish to grow in their careers, acquire skills, and become managers

To thrive in this job, you must be able to:

• Transform disparate data sources into strategic knowledge
• Serve as an internal consultant to define business questions, transform data and analysis into meaningful and actionable information for a variety of customer segments, and help end users interpret and apply analytic results
• Foster relationships and collaborate with external stakeholders, including consumers, payers, employers, and the government, to facilitate partnerships that create value in health care
• Analyze monthly results for cost of care opportunities and trends; and implement corrective actions or strategic initiatives.
• Monitor external economic and healthcare issues affecting trends, preparing succinct, easy to understand presentations of results and conclusion
• Provide and coordinate cost of care analytics for projects that impact our customers and providing ROI-analysis on new initiatives and programs 
• Utilize SAS to query data from multiple data warehouses, develop processes, write/revise programs, and create databases
• Plan and lead complex projects from inception to completion, including working independently to create timelines, define deliverables, monitor progress, implement projects, and monitor/resolve post-implementation issues.
• Works collaboratively with other Analytics & Data Science members to drive the overall success of the cost reduction goals of BCBSAZ. Maintains effective working relationships to ensure teamwork in achieving corporate goals. Trains others on financial and analytics topics as appropriate. 

We are looking for someone with:

• Superior analytical skills
• Strong and effective written, verbal, and presentation skills with the ability to collaborate with team members and business stakeholders at all levels of the organization
• Ability to define problems, collect data, establish facts, and draw valid conclusions
• Technical ability to resolve complex business and actuarial issues
• Ability to deal with the unpredictability of the insurance business and minimize the variance between predicted and actual outcomes
• Strong customer service and interpersonal skills that allow for strong collaboration in a fast-moving, customer-centric environment
• Ability to recognize strategic opportunities and use data to make timely and sound decisions
• Flexibility and willingness to adjust to shifting demands/priorities
• Ability and experience to assimilate multiple new functions, services, projects, and systems while maintaining existing systems and programs

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in mathematics, business, finance, statistics, or related field
• Seven (7) years of actuarial or financial experience, including Medicare Advantage, business reporting and provider payment methodologies
• Seven (7) years of working in a flexible, customer-centric team environment while leading cross-functional initiatives and/or projects
• Three (3) years of profit and loss oversight or monthly financial close process experience
• Intermediate PC proficiency, including strong skills in word processing, presentation, database, spreadsheet, business intelligence, statistical, and data cubing software.

Why Join Blue Cross Blue Shield of Arizona?

At BCBSAZ, your pursuit of balance, happiness, and fulfillment is supported through our Workability model. Workability is our future hybrid workforce strategy and defines where and how we do our jobs: 100% remote, 100% in the office or somewhere in-between.

No matter where you choose to work, we want you to be well. Our award-winning healthy campus in Phoenix is always available to you. Access telehealth services at our BlueCare Anywhere kiosk, fuel up with healthy meals and snacks at our cafeterias and Work Perks Café, and make the most of our onsite fitness center by taking advantage of personal trainers, a nutritionist, Health Support programs, and daily group fitness classes, including spin, yoga, and Zumba.

Our Commitment

BCBSAZ does not discriminate in hiring or employment on the basis of race, ethnicity, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, age, disability, protected veteran status or any other protected group.

Thank you for your interest in Blue Cross Blue Shield of Arizona.  For more information on our company, see azblue.com.  If interested in this position, please apply.