Note: The job is a remote job and is open to candidates in USA. Affordable Care is seeking a Senior Manager of Outside Lab Operations to own the enterprise outside lab program from implementation through ongoing operations. The role will establish governance, drive practice adoption, manage vendor performance, optimize workflows and technology, oversee training and change management, and deliver measurable financial and patient-care outcomes.
Responsibilities
- Serve as the end-to-end business owner for the enterprise outside lab program, from rollout and stabilization through ongoing operations and continuous improvement
- Translate outside lab strategy into a clear operating roadmap with milestones, owners, dependencies, risks, decisions, and measurable outcomes
- Establish decision rights and governance across Lab Operations, Field Operations, Clinical, Procurement, Finance, IT, Training, Compliance, vendors, and practices
- Maintain a disciplined operating cadence, including implementation reviews, performance reviews, issue escalation, decision logs, and executive updates
- Own closure of cross-functional actions and escalate material risks early when work is off-track, under-resourced, or unclear
- Ensure the program evolves from a launch initiative into a durable, scalable operating capability
- Drive practice adoption of preferred outside lab partners, approved product categories, ordering channels, and standard workflows
- Identify practices and regions with off-contract spend, low adoption, or workflow noncompliance; diagnose root causes and coordinate targeted interventions
- Develop practical adoption plans with field leaders and practice teams, including clear expectations, communications, training, reinforcement, and escalation paths
- Monitor adoption by practice, territory, division, vendor, and product category and convert exceptions into owner-based action plans
- Partner with Field Operations and Lab leadership to reduce unnecessary local variation while preserving appropriate clinical judgment and patient-specific flexibility
- Create feedback loops that surface practice pain points and translate them into workflow, training, technology, or vendor improvements
- Own the operating relationship with preferred outside lab partners after contracting, in partnership with Procurement and Clinical
- Establish and manage vendor scorecards covering quality, turnaround time, remakes, case acceptance, service responsiveness, issue resolution, invoice accuracy, and other agreed service levels
- Lead recurring vendor performance reviews, document commitments, and ensure corrective actions are completed and sustained
- Coordinate rapid resolution of systemic service failures and high-impact case escalations, while building mechanisms that prevent recurrence
- Partner with Procurement on contract compliance, pricing issues, volume commitments, and commercial opportunities; provide the operational facts needed for negotiations
- Maintain appropriate vendor contingency and capacity plans to protect patient care and practice operations
- Own the end-to-end operating workflow for outside lab cases, including ordering, case submission, digital scanning, ticketing, status visibility, delivery, escalation, invoicing, and performance reporting
- Lead operational implementation and ongoing optimization of enabling platforms and integrations, including Dentira, vendor portals, scanner workflows, Salesforce ticketing, and relevant practice systems
- Ensure workflows are clinic-ready, clearly documented, tested with practices, and supported by reliable escalation paths before broader deployment
- Coordinate pilots and phased rollouts; define success criteria, collect feedback, resolve readiness gaps, and make scale, pause, or redesign recommendations
- Partner with IT and vendors to prioritize defects, enhancements, data needs, integrations, and user-experience improvements based on business value and field impact
- Maintain current SOPs, playbooks, role clarity, and process controls for all material outside lab workflows
- Partner with Training, Field Operations, Clinical, and vendors to build and maintain role-based training for practice teams, field leaders, and support functions
- Ensure training content and live vendor instruction are aligned to approved workflows, clinical standards, platform requirements, and escalation processes
- Develop launch and reinforcement communications that make the required action, rationale, timing, and support model clear
- Use adoption and performance data to target retraining and reinforcement where it will have the greatest impact
- Validate training effectiveness through workflow observation, user feedback, adoption trends, and operating results
- Build sustainable onboarding and refresher mechanisms so performance does not depend on one-time launch activity or tribal knowledge
- Own the outside lab performance and value-capture scorecard, with clear definitions, targets, owners, and reporting cadence
- Track contracted versus off-contract spend, preferred-vendor penetration, savings realization, volume migration, quality, turnaround time, remakes, service performance, adoption, and patient or practice impact
- Partner with Finance and Procurement to validate baselines, savings methodology, forecasts, and realized financial impact
- Quantify value leakage and prioritize actions based on financial impact, patient experience, operational risk, and feasibility
- Translate performance trends into concise 'so what / now what' recommendations for Lab, Operations, and executive leadership
- Maintain a clear view of program risks, decisions needed, near-term priorities, and expected value delivery
- Build a structured improvement backlog informed by data, practice feedback, vendor performance, clinical input, and frontline observation
- Prioritize improvements that simplify practice workflows, improve quality and turnaround time, reduce remakes and escalations, strengthen compliance, or increase value capture
- Standardize proven improvements and embed them into SOPs, technology, training, scorecards, and operating routines
- Benchmark vendors and workflows, evaluate new capabilities, and recommend changes to the vendor portfolio or operating model when evidence supports them
- Ensure lessons from pilots, escalations, and performance reviews are converted into durable process changes
- Reinforce a culture of accountability, simplicity, partnership, and measurable outcomes across the program
Skills
- Bachelor's degree in Business Administration, Operations, Healthcare Management, Supply Chain, Finance, Analytics, or a related field required
- 5+ years of progressive experience in operations, program management, vendor management, supply chain, healthcare, dental, laboratory, or multi-site service operations
- Demonstrated experience leading complex cross-functional initiatives from design through rollout, stabilization, and ongoing performance management
- Experience managing external vendors through scorecards, service levels, operating reviews, escalation, and corrective action
- Strong analytical and financial acumen, including KPI management, spend analysis, savings validation, forecasting, and business cases
- Experience driving adoption and change across distributed field locations without relying solely on formal authority
- Willingness and ability to travel to practices, labs, vendor sites, and company meetings as required
- Applicants must be currently authorized to work in the United States on a full-time basis
- Advanced degree preferred
- Dental laboratory, dental practice, healthcare, procurement, or digital workflow experience preferred
- Familiarity with Dentira, dental scanners and digital case workflows, Salesforce, Dentrix, Power BI, Excel, and PowerPoint preferred
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