TITLE:
Director of Finance 

THE CLIENT:
Our client is the Carilion Clinic (www.carilion.com) located in Roanoke, Virginia. Carilion Clinic is a not-for-profit multi-specialty healthcare organization with more than four hundred physicians and eight hospitals. The Clinic is committed to clinical excellence, education and research.More specifically, Carilion has put together a new partnership with Virginia Tech to form a medical school with a unique research-based curriculum in a new facility to be built on Carilion’s campus. This partnership will bring the most up-to-date treatments to their patients. Additionally, a new 215,000 square foot MOB is being built that will house the surgery department and ancillaries, and a 150,000 square foot medical school and research institute.  The exciting thing is that this organization is truly creating a brand new culture from hospital-centric to physician-driven patient-centered.  Much has been written about the new charter and their website is expansive.  The physician complement has grown exponentially.  By January 2009, the clinic will be composed of 416 full-time MDs, 106 MLPs, 127 residents, and a staff of 1104.  Much is being done to further recruit various physicians, although the recent expansion has been enormous.  The Clinic’s gross revenues are $350 million, net $200 million, covering 141 sites.  Roanoke is located in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, along the Appalachian Trail, and affords families the charm of small town America with the amenities of larger cities.

THE POSITION: 
At present, there is a need for a Director of Finance for the Department of Surgery.  Broadly speaking, the incumbent in this role will oversee, for the department: financial planning and evaluation, identification and communication of those areas of concentration and actions to execute financial goals and strategies, collaboration with leadership (physician and operational) on how to add value by enhancing practice profitability and market dominance, and work with the team to effect better physician compensation administration, practice implementation, acquisition due diligence, and physician contract management. More specifically, the incumbent will be held accountable for:

• Directing the development of operating and capital budgets.
• Helping to establish and monitor financial metrics and preparing budget variance analyses.
• Coordinating and/or performing short and long-range financial analyses using appropriate techniques.
• Analyzing the financial impact of proposed contracts and recommending their execution.
• Analyzing operational issues affecting surgery and the whole organization and determining their financial impact.
• Evaluating and recommending business opportunities. Providing financial education to those in the surgery department.
• Maintaining productive work relationships with those in revenue cycle management, treasury, audit, tax, accounting decision support, and insurance departments on behalf of the surgery department.
• Promoting Carilion Clinic’s Culture of Excellence and quality service through teamwork, respectful communication, and maintenance of a professional environment, while partnering with those being served in anticipation of patient and customer needs.

Over all, this individual will have been successful in this role, over the next few years, if s/he has:

• Served as a "thought partner" to the surgery department leadership and physicians, assisting them in developing strategies and translating them into flexible business plans.
• Organized and managed the actual financial planning process. Provided analysis of trends and issues, internal and external, to further refine strategic responses.
• Provided counsel and advice regarding the likely impact on the financial health/commitments of strategic decisions.
• Provided guidance on how to successfully manage growth of the department.

QUALIFICATIONS: 
The keys to success, in the role of a Director of Finance, are based upon a combination of knowledge, experience, motivation and personality. Ideally, the selected candidate will have a degree in accounting or finance, with an MBA/CPA preferred and have had 3 -7 years experience doing financial analysis in medium (25 – 50) to large (>100) sized physician practices, multi-specialty preferred. (That experience could also come from other kinds of providers of healthcare services: IPAs, IDNs, etc.) More to the point, they should be familiar with the nuances of physician-driven environments and like them! While this is broadly a financial analytical role, it calls for the “nose” of an auditor. The key is getting to the root of what is going on in the surgery department’s financials, exhuming the data, organizing and collating it in such a way as to effectively and cogently present meaningful and useful financial information to senior leadership: physician and operational. To do these things requires that the Director of Finance “knows-his/her-stuff”: how to develop budgets, analyze financial data and patterns, prepare financial statements, measure physician productivity, physician compensation, be knowledgeable of relevant computer systems, spreadsheets (Excel and PowerPoint) and financial systems programs and applications. Axiomatically, this individual is someone with a genuine love and “feel” for finance (and accounting) and knows how to engender that in others.

Clearly, the individual we seek will be truly “hands-on,” willing/able/patient enough to manage financial direction recognizing the flexibility necessary to work with disparate audiences. Implicitly, this means the selected individual must be a really effective communicator (which includes being a good listener) and someone who enjoys working with physicians (and being respected by them). This is a job that implies “building” things in the surgery department: pulling-things-together, making sense of the numbers for better management of the business through the metrics, and yet being clear and cogent to the various audiences about what the numbers mean. Naturally, the incumbent will have to manage multiple priorities and deadlines in an expedient and decisive manner. So, in order to truly excel, this individual needs to demonstrate collegiality, organization-building orientation, team-player characteristics, with a combination of determination, high energy, maturity, tactfulness, and a sense of humor.

COMPENSATION:
The salary plus bonus will aggregate above $100,000 along with other appropriate perquisites.  Compensation will be truly competitive relative to the candidate's background and agreed-upon expectations.

CONTACT INFORMATION:
Peter A. Rabinowitz, President
P • A • R • Associates, Inc.
23 West Bay Road
Osterville, MA 02655
(508) 420-2372 (phone)
(508) 420-9268 (fax)
E-mail: peter@parassoc.com