Pharmacy Assistant Director - Business and Finance

At Duke Health, we're driven by a commitment to compassionate care that changes the lives of patients, their loved ones, and the greater community. No matter where your talents lie, join us and discover how we can advance health together.

 

About Duke University Hospital

Pursue your passion for caring with Duke University Hospital in Durham, North Carolina, which is consistently ranked among the best in the United States. The largest of the four Duke Healthhospitals with 1062 patient beds, it features comprehensive diagnostic and therapeutic facilities, including a regional emergency/trauma center, an endo-surgery center, and more.

General Description of the Job Class

Under the direction of the Associate Chief Pharmacy Officer of Pharmacy Finance and Supply Chain, the Assistant Director of Pharmacy Business and Finance provides enterprise leadership and sets the long-range financial direction for pharmacy business operations and revenue integrity. This role oversees systemwide pharmacy financial strategy, budgeting, forecasting, margin improvement, medication charge capture, charge description master management, contracting support, payer alignment, and drug expense stewardship across acute care, ambulatory, infusion, retail and specialty pharmacy, and long-term care settings.

The Assistant Director operates with strong business and strategic acumen and serves as a key partner to Finance, Revenue Cycle, Supply Chain, Compliance, Legal, Information Systems, and Payer Strategy to optimize pharmacy financial performance and ensure alignment with DUHS strategic, operational, and quality goals. This role requires advanced knowledge of drug pricing methodologies, reimbursement models, and pharmacy business operations within a complex health system.

 

Duties and Responsibilities of this Level

General Responsibilities

• Enterprise Pharmacy Financial Leadership: Provides strategic leadership for pharmacy financial performance, including drug budgeting, forecasting, variance analysis, and financial planning. Ensures transparent, accurate financial reporting and leverages automation and analytics to improve efficiency and decision making.
• Revenue Integrity & Charge Drug Master Oversight: Oversees strategy for pharmacy charge description master (CDM) management and revenue integrity functions. Ensures compliant, accurate, and timely charge capture and collaborates with Revenue Cycle to resolve denials and reimbursement issues.
• Talent Management & Leadership Development: Lead and effectively manage a high-performing team. Responsible for workforce planning and hiring, establishing and maintaining optimal staffing ratios, coaching, performance management, talent management and leader development.
• Business Intelligence & Analytics Leadership – Directs the pharmacy analytics strategy, advancing automation, dashboards, forecasting tools, and data visualization. Synthesizes trends and insights to support financial, operational, and strategic decisions at the enterprise level. Tracks performance of margin improvement initiatives.

Specific Responsibilities

• Understanding of the income statement, budgets, capital, and operations are key responsibilities of this position.
• Supervise the Financial Analysts and Specialists in the Department.
• Coordination of ad hoc analysis and reporting.
• Assist with training and development of financial analysts.
• Provide full project level support in the development of financial/operational analysis of programs, services, patient populations and Clinical Service Units.
• Provide assistance in the development of business plans by project champions. Provide financial analysis associated with business plans and any other capital requests.
• Directly support areas of responsibility of assigned operational leaders in providing a full range of financial support to assist them in the preparation and analysis of financial reports.
• Prepare and review monthly analysis of the income statement, including actual to budget review. Understand underlying transactions on income statement and investigate areas for improvement.
• Develop and review trend analysis to highlight unusual transactions.
• Assist in presentation at leadership meetings, as needed.
• Work closely with operations personnel to understand and document operational accounting issues (i.e., physical inventory counts, flow of transactions and effect on financial results). Assist in review of other departmental processes. Identify areas of improvement across and within processes. Respond in a timely fashion to operations requests for information and issue resolution.
• Assist in compiling and analyzing key performance indicators fo