Engagement Manager

Sonoran Healthcare Strategies is a fractional COO firm. We work with independent specialty medical practices, behavioral health groups, MSOs, and nonprofit boards on operations, strategy, finance, and growth.

Most of our clients are physician owned, with two to five locations and somewhere between 15 and 100 employees. They're great at the clinical side and stretched thin on everything else. We step in as their operating leadership: revenue cycle, scheduling, staffing structure, systems, and the plan for what comes next.

We're small on purpose, and we're growing. You'd be joining a team of trusted specialists we already work with every week, and helping build what comes next.

THE ROLE

I'm looking for someone to work alongside me on active client engagements, keep the work moving, and over time take on clients of their own.

Early on, you'll be the reason nothing slips. That means meeting prep and follow through, project plans, client communication, data pulls, and the operational cleanup every engagement needs. As you learn how we work and clients start trusting you, you'll lead workstreams on your own. Then whole engagements.

This isn't an admin role with a nicer title. It's a training ground for someone who wants to become a healthcare operations consultant.

WHAT YOU'LL DO

• Run the operating rhythm on client engagements: agendas, notes, action items, and chasing things until they're actually done.

• Build and keep up project plans, implementation timelines, and status updates for each client.

• Pull and make sense of the numbers: AR aging, denial trends, provider productivity, schedule utilization, labor cost as a share of revenue.

• Draft client deliverables like SOPs, workflow maps, board materials, and recommendations. I'll review them at first. Eventually you'll own them.

• Support system implementations and vendor transitions across EHR, practice management, billing, and HR platforms.

• Be a steady point of contact for practice administrators, office managers, and billing teams.

• Take part in business development. That means joining discovery calls, helping build proposals, and over time bringing in clients of your own. It's a real part of this job, not an afterthought.

• Help keep Sonoran itself running well: new client onboarding, and our own templates and systems.

WHAT YOU BRING

• A few years running operations somewhere in healthcare. Single specialty, multispecialty, primary care, behavioral health, an MSO, or revenue cycle all count. How you think matters more than where you've been.

• A working sense of how a practice makes money: billing, payer mix, credentialing, scheduling, and where it usually leaks.

• Comfort in spreadsheets, and the ability to turn numbers into a recommendation someone can act on.

• Clear writing. You can send an email to a physician owner without me rewriting it.

• Organization without rigidity. You can juggle several clients at once and not drop things.

• A level head in hard conversations. Our clients are often under real pressure, and somebody has to stay calm.

• A genuine interest in building a consulting career, not just holding a job.

Nice to have: experience with platforms like athenahealth, eClinicalWorks, Mod Med, CentralReach, or Lumary; prior consulting or multisite leadership; a degree in healthcare administration or business. An MHA or MBA is a plus, not a requirement.

WHERE THIS GOES

The whole point of this hire is that you grow into a consultant with your own book.

First six months: learn the work. Support me across engagements, own the follow through, and build real relationships with client teams.

Six to twelve months: lead workstreams. Own defined projects like a revenue cycle cleanup, a scheduling redesign, or a system implementation, with me as backup.

Year two: own clients. Lead your own engagements, with compensation that grows with the clients you manage.

I'll be straight with you: the timeline moves with you. Some people get there faster, and that's fine by me.

HOW WE WORK

We're remote first and will travel to client sites when it matters. We have clients across the country. It's a small team with high trust and direct feedback. You'll work closely with me, see how decisions actually get made, and get honest coaching along the way.

PAY AND BENEFITS

$75,000 base plus up to a 10% performance bonus in your first year, with a path to revenue share on the clients you lead. You also get a healthcare or wellness stipend after 90 days, three weeks of paid vacation a year, and a week of paid sick time.

HOW TO APPLY

Apply here with your resume, and include a short note about an operational problem you fixed in a practice and how you did it. Skip the generic cover letter. I'd rather hear how you think.

Michael Kemp

Founder and President, Sonoran Healthcare Strategies