Legal & Contract Operations Manager

SUMMARY: The Legal & Contract Operations Manager is responsible for managing the design, implementation, and continuous improvement of the processes through which InterMed manages legal and transactional work. The successful candidate will facilitate the organization in translating its contractual relationships into practical operational requirements and meaningful measures of value.

Reporting to the General Counsel, the Manager works across legal, compliance, business operations, contracting functions, technology, data, and analytics. The role has two primary areas of responsibility: (1) developing, operationalizing and managing effective, scalable processes for transactions and related legal work; and (2) interpreting contractual terms, rights and expectations for operational teams and analysts so they can meaningfully manage InterMed’s third party relationships and incorporate that experience into future contracting.

The Manager helps translate departmental and governance requirements into practical workflows, systems, templates, playbooks, and other tools. The Manager does not own ongoing monitoring of contractual performance or the analytics function but interprets for responsible teams what InterMed has contracted for, what rights and expectations apply, what information is needed to evaluate whether contractual relationships are delivering their intended value, and offers advice based on previous experience on the development of performance tracking tools. The Manager serves as a bridge for escalation of performance and contract issues between the business owner of the third-party relationship and legal.

The successful candidate will have a proven record and intuitive understanding of high volume and high value transactional processes and design who can work comfortably with contracts, technology, data, and the demeanor necessary to introduce and implement change with stakeholders across the organization.

CORE RESPONSIBILITIES:

Process Design & Legal Operations

• Partner with the General Counsel, Compliance, and operational stakeholders to design, implement, and continuously improve processes for legal and transactional work, including intake, review, approval, execution, recordkeeping, renewal, and other lifecycle activities.
• Assess current practices and develop practical workflows that incorporate legal, regulatory, compliance, and business requirements; clearly allocate responsibilities and decision points; and provide appropriate pathways for escalation to Legal, Compliance, or other subject-matter experts.
• Identify opportunities to simplify, standardize, delegate, or automate work and develop the templates, playbooks, procedures, decision tools, training, and other resources necessary to put improved processes into practice.
• Lead implementation and adoption of new processes and workflows, coordinating stakeholders, technology, communication, training, and feedback and using operational data and experience to drive continuous improvement.

Contract Translation & Business Enablement

• Develop a working understanding of InterMed’s significant contractual relationships and read and synthesize contracts to identify provisions with material business or operational implications, including financial terms, service and performance expectations, reporting obligations, remedies, audit and information rights, and renewal and termination provisions.
• Translate contractual terms into practical information for operational and contracting teams, helping them understand InterMed’s obligations, the performance and value it is entitled to expect, and the contractual rights and mechanisms available to support those expectations.
• Serve as a link among Legal, contracting and operational departments, and data and analytics resources to translate contractual expectations and business objectives into meaningful questions, measures, data requirements, and reporting needs.
• Help identify gaps in contractual terms, operational processes, data, or reporting that limit InterMed’s ability to evaluate contractual relationships, and bring together contractual requirements, operational experience, and available performance information to inform renewals and future negotiations.
• Escalate contractual ambiguities, disputes, potential enforcement matters, regulatory or compliance concerns, and other issues requiring substantive legal or subject matter expertise.

Transaction, Technology & Operational Support

• Coordinate centralized intake and triage of contracts and other transactional matters and serve as an initial reviewer and editor using approved templates, playbooks, and escalation criteria.
• Maintain centralized contract templates, clauses, playbooks, guidance, and related resources in consultation with the General Counsel and appropriate subject matter experts.
• Partner with the General Counsel and key stakeholders to evaluate, select, implement, and optimize contract lifecycle management (CLM) and related legal technology, including defining requirements, evaluating solutions, designing workflows, supporting implementation and data migration, testing, training, and adoption.
• Serve as a key operational owner of InterMed’s CLM and related technology and identify opportunities to use artificial intelligence, automation, and other tools to improve contract review, workflow, data capture, reporting, knowledge management, and other legal and transactional processes.
• Support cross-functional legal and business operations projects as assigned.

Leadership Competencies

• Personnel Management
  • Overall accountability and management of colleagues
  • Regularly assess developmental opportunities for colleagues, coach colleagues to enhance performance, and support colleagues in learning and applying new skills and competencies.
  • Coordinate and monitor staffing levels and labor efficiency.
  • Approver for colleague payroll biweekly in accordance with payroll department guidelines and schedule.
  • Mentors and counsels’ colleagues to include initiating Performance Improvement plans.
  • Works with the Compliance and Human Resources teams to ensure compliance with State, Federal and OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration) requirements for colleagues.
• Leadership
  • Models behaviors that demonstrate service excellence to colleagues and focus on the patient as the primary customer.
  • Leads Lean Six Sigma initiatives for the department to foster a culture of continuous improvement.
  • Fosters intra-departmental support and collaboration between all sites.
  • Monitors department performance and creatively seeks solutions to foster quality improvement.
  • Develop and maintain an open and effective line of communication with colleagues.
• Communication
  • Works in partnership with the clinical teams, practice leadership, and senior leadership teams.
  • Fosters strong working relationships with all levels of the organization to facilitate effective communication and to connect front line colleagues’ daily priorities to the organization’s strategic goals.
  • Demonstrates strong interpersonal savvy.
  • Strategic Planning and Program Coordination
  • Assess current state of department with relation to existing InterMed goals and plans.
  • Develops proactive plans to ensure InterMed’s position as a leader in healthcare in alignment with company KPIs.
  • Monitors budgets to identify potential financial overruns and variances; makes appropriate recommendations to alleviate financial implications.
  • Champions interdepartmental problem solving.
  • Ensures appropriate departmental policy development and adherence.
• Confidentiality
  • Demonstrate knowledge and understanding of patient privacy rights under HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability) guidelines. Maintain confidentiality related to financial, or other sensitive materials and information in printed, electronic, or verbal form, which may jeopardize the privacy of patients and/or colleagues. Accesses and uses the minimum necessary patient identifiable information to perform job responsibilities and duties and only for authorized purposes.
  • Performs other duties to support the mission, vision and values of InterMed.

MISSION AND VALUES:

• Follows InterMed’s mission to provide patient-centered primary care, putting the patient first to deliver high quality, high value care.
• Provide the highest quality care to our patients with a level of service that exceeds their expectations.
• Maintain a positive attitude and always treat our patients and each other with dignity and respect.
• Insist on honesty and integrity from each other and our business partners.
• Make teamwork a core component of our relationships between physicians, colleagues, and patients.
• Embrace change to better serve our patients.
• Use business practices that feature individual accountability and group responsibility to ensure delivery of high value healthcare.
• Have fun as we carry out our mission to serve.

KNOWLEDGE, SKILLS, AND ABILITIES:

• Education:
  • Bachelor’s degree or equivalent combination of education and relevant professional experience required
• Experience:
  • Experience using artificial intelligence or automation to improve legal, contracting, or business processes is strongly preferred, particularly experience identifying practical use cases and integrating AI-enabled tools into sustainable workflows.
  • Relevant experience in transactional processes, legal operations, contracting, project management, process improvement, healthcare administration, consulting, compliance operations, or related field.
  • Strong process-development, problem-solving, organizational, and project-management skills, including the ability to understand how work is performed, identify opportunities for improvement, and translate ideas into practical processes.
  • Ability to read and understand commercial contracts and communicate important contractual concepts to business stakeholders or demonstrated aptitude and experience that would support development of this capability.
  • Strong analytical mindset and ability to work effectively with operational, legal, compliance, technical, and data and analytics stakeholders.
  • Strong written and verbal communication skills, sound judgment, and the ability to build productive cross-functional relationships and recognize when issues require escalation.
  • Comfort learning and using business technology. Experience participating in the evaluation, implementation, or optimization of CLM, workflow, or comparable enterprise technology is preferred.
  • Healthcare experience is helpful but not required.

The estimated compensation range is the budgeted amount for this position. Final offers are based on various factors, including skill set, experience, location, qualifications, and other job-related reasons. Certain positions may be eligible for incentive compensation plans above and beyond base compensation.