Managed Care Consultant

You’re a strategic thinker, trusted advisor, and collaborative partner who sees opportunity in complexity. You know how to turn challenging managed care issues into smart, actionable strategies that create meaningful results for hospitals, health systems, and physician groups.

Whether you’re uncovering insights in financial data, shaping a payor negotiation strategy, advising senior leaders, or crafting communications that build alignment and momentum, you understand that the strongest managed care strategies go beyond the numbers—combining insight, leverage, relationships, and compelling communication to drive meaningful results.

In this role, you’ll lead high-impact client engagements and help healthcare organizations navigate their most complex managed care challenges. Working at the intersection of strategy, analytics, relationships, and communication, you’ll lead complex initiatives, influence critical decisions, and see the tangible impact of your work.

What You’ll Do:

• Managed Care Consulting
  • Provide strategic insight and recommendations on contract negotiation positioning, payor mix, rate benchmarking, operational efficiencies, and network strategy.
  • Interpret client claims data, revenue cycle metrics, price transparency data, and market trends to inform managed care strategies.
  • Translate complex reimbursement and contracting concepts into clear, actionable strategies and communications for audiences (patients, employers, brokers, and providers).
  • Identify and assess risks, scenarios, and potential impacts of contract terminations or out-of-network situations for clients.
  • Support the creation and implementation of organizational change management initiatives, including governance structures, executive decision-making, risk mitigation, and cross-functional coordination.
• Project Management
  • Serve as manager for managed care clients, overseeing strategic consulting engagements and ensuring high-quality deliverables across all workstreams.
  • Develop and manage project timelines, ensuring milestones and deliverables are met while maintaining alignment across client and internal teams.
  • Build and maintain strong client relationships by understanding their business objectives, identifying opportunities for strategic growth, and providing proactive counsel.
  • Manage internal cross-functional teams (analytics, creative, media, and communications) to ensure alignment and on-time delivery.
  • Oversee vendor and partner relationships (research firms, data vendors, call centers) to support client programs.
  • Lead client presentations and facilitate executive-level discussions.
• Communications Development:
  • Lead the creation of strategic communication plans supporting managed care negotiations, issues management, and stakeholder engagement.
  • Oversee message development, creative concepting, and asset production across paid, earned, owned, and internal channels.
  • Review and refine all materials for clarity, tone, and alignment with client and regulatory standards.
  • Collaborate closely with internal creative and media teams to ensure communications are data-informed and audience-targeted.
• Team Development and Collaboration:
  • Develop junior team members, providing feedback and professional growth opportunities.
  • Collaborate across Unlock’s Managed Care, Strategic Communications, and Analytics teams to develop best practices and enhance integrated client delivery.
  • Contribute to internal training, client workflows and processes and methodologies.
• Market Insights:
  • Stay ahead of healthcare industry trends, including reimbursement policy, payor performance, and regulatory changes impacting provider-payor dynamics.
  • Translate insights into actionable strategies for clients and contribute to Unlock Health’s managed care knowledge base.

Ideal Qualifications:

• Equivalent of 5 to 7 years of experience in healthcare consulting or managed care is a must, ideally within a consulting environment or health system.
• Proven success leading managed care or reimbursement strategy projects — such as benchmarking, negotiation preparation, or contract modeling.
• Strong understanding of managed care models, provider reimbursement methodologies, and healthcare market dynamics.
• Advanced proficiency in Microsoft Excel, including experience with data analysis, and translating findings into actionable insights.
• Excellent writing, presentation, and storytelling skills — capable of translating financial and strategic insights into compelling communications.
• Demonstrated experience managing multiple clients, projects, and cross-functional teams simultaneously.
• Experience with client-facing facilitation including running meetings, presenting analyses, and conducting stakeholder interviews.
• Proficiency in analyzing data and metrics to inform strategy and measure impact.
• Entrepreneurial mindset with a drive to innovate and grow the managed care consulting practice.
• Bachelor’s degree required; advanced degree in health administration, business, or public policy preferred.