Associate Director Clinical Trial Financial Operations

The Associate Director, Clinical Trial Finance Operations and Strategy serves as Cooper University Health Care’s enterprise leader for clinical trial financial stewardship.

This role aligns coverage analysis, clinical research rate-setting methodology, budgeting, billing and reimbursement processes, and system-build decisions across Cooper’s clinical trial infrastructure. The position collaborates with clinical departments, revenue cycle, finance, compliance, legal, sponsored programs contracting, audit, and Epic/OnCore/IT stakeholders to ensure that clinical trials involving third-party billable services are activated and managed through accurate, transparent, and sustainable financial workflows. The Associate Director establishes institutional governance, decision logic, process flows, standards, training, escalation pathways, and quality controls for clinical trial financial oversight, and serves as Cooper’s lead institutional resource for integrating internal controls across those workflows.

Establish and govern Cooper’s institutional framework for clinical trial financial administration and oversight, ensuring consistent alignment among coverage analysis, budget development, system configuration, reimbursement assumptions, and downstream billing processes.

Provide institutional leadership for the interpretation of clinical trial protocols, informed consent forms, and related study documents to establish consistent, defensible determinations of Medicare-billable services, sponsor-paid services, and research-related costs.

Provide institutional oversight of outsourced coverage analysis services, ensuring vendor deliverables meet Cooper’s quality, compliance, documentation, and workflow integration standards.

Provide institutional leadership and subject matter expertise for research billing compliance, ensuring Cooper’s adherence to Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) regulations and internal research billing policies, and guiding audit readiness.

Lead clinical trial financial workflow design, testing, validation, and optimization across Epic, OnCore, and related systems, including billing grids, calendar/budget build requirements, charge master events, rate bases, modifiers, routing logic, and invoiceable events. 

Provide subject matter expertise and institutional guidance in developing Cooper-specific costing policies and methodologies to support fair market value determinations for research-related charges.

Serve as the institutional liaison and subject matter expert across clinical research, sponsor/contracting, reimbursement, compliance, legal, audit, finance, clinical operations, and technology stakeholders; translate complex coverage analysis, reimbursement, budgeting, billing, contracting, and system-build requirements into shared decisions, aligned workflows, and operationally usable handoffs.

Establish and oversee the governance framework for clinical trial financial workflow documentation, standards, and internal controls, ensuring that SOPs, decision tools, training resources, quality assurance expectations, documentation standards, and escalation pathways are developed collaboratively and consistently applied across coverage analysis, budget/build handoffs, vendor outputs, amendments, and billing workflow coordination.

Lead financial workflow risk identification and process improvement efforts across clinical trial billing, reimbursement, charge routing, coverage analysis, and system configuration, in partnership with

Compliance, Revenue Cycle, Finance, and operational stakeholders.

Build Cooper’s institutional knowledge base and analytics framework for clinical trial financial workflows, using performance data, vendor trends, turnaround times, recurring discrepancies, activation barriers, staffing needs, system issues, and revenue capture opportunities to inform ORSP and research leadership decisions regarding infrastructure development, internalization strategy, and future coverage analysis capacity.

Minimum of seven years of progressively responsible experience required in clinical trial financial operations and strategy, Medicare Coverage Analysis, research billing, healthcare reimbursement, research revenue cycle, charge master administration, clinical trial budgeting, clinical research finance, clinical trial billing compliance, or comparable academic medical center or healthcare system functions.

Prior independent hands-on experience performing Medicare Coverage Analyses is required. 

The candidate must demonstrate expert-level ability to interpret clinical research protocols, establish payer/sponsor responsibility determinations, connect coverage analysis decisions to FMV and Medicare-rate assumptions, translate determinations into Epic/OnCore and billing-grid requirements, and train or oversee future coverage analysis staff. 

Experience must include advanced cross-functional work with Revenue Cycle, Revenue Integrity, Finance, Compliance, Internal Audit, Legal, IT/systems, clinical departments, institute research teams, and study teams. 

Epic experience required. OnCore or comparable CTMS financial workflow experience strongly preferred.

Bachelor’s degree required in Healthcare administration, business administration, finance, accounting, health information management, nursing, public health, clinical research, life sciences, healthcare compliance, healthcare reimbursement, or related field.

Master’s degree preferred; however, equivalent advanced professional experience may be considered for candidates who demonstrate substantial leadership across clinical trial financial workflows, including coverage analysis, reimbursement, research billing, revenue cycle, and research systems.

Expert knowledge of Medicare Coverage Analysis, clinical trial billing compliance, payer/sponsor responsibility determinations, research charge routing, Epic research billing, CTMS financial workflows, and clinical trial lifecycle requirements.

Deep understanding of Medicare coverage rules and CMS guidelines.

Advanced ability to translate across clinical, regulatory, reimbursement, contracting, revenue cycle, finance, IT/systems, compliance, legal, internal audit, and research operations stakeholders to create shared workflow decisions.

Advanced financial and analytical judgment, including fair market value methodology/setting, Medicare rate-setting, research charge master and fee schedule governance, clinical trial budget assumptions,

QA controls, and audit-ready documentation.

Demonstrated knowledge of federal regulations including HIPAA, FDA, and OHRP with expertise in data collection, handling, storage, and sharing practices.

Strong analytical, critical thinking, and problem-solving skills with a solutions-oriented approach.

Proven ability to organize, manage multiple priorities, and meet deadlines.

Salary Min ($)USD $45.00 Salary Max ($)USD $78.00