Strategic Account Operations Manager – Medical Prior Authorization

McKesson is an impact-driven, Fortune 10 company that touches virtually every aspect of healthcare. We are known for delivering insights, products, and services that make quality care more accessible and affordable. Here, we focus on the health, happiness, and well-being of you and those we serve – we care.

What you do at McKesson matters. We foster a culture where you can grow, make an impact, and are empowered to bring new ideas. Together, we thrive as we shape the future of health for patients, our communities, and our people. If you want to be part of tomorrow’s health today, we want to hear from you.

Role Overview

Reporting to the Director, Account Operations, the Strategic Account Operations Manager (Medical Prior Authorization) is responsible for overseeing complex customer relationships, programs, and initiatives focused on medical benefit prior authorization and front-end access services.

We are seeking an experienced account operations leader with deep medical PA expertise and strong client-facing operational experience to support strategic programs critical to CoverMyMeds’ evolving access strategy. This role will help build and mature CMM’s medical PA capabilities while ensuring high-quality, scalable execution for assigned customers.

This position owns a portfolio of highly complex, strategic programs and serves as a trusted operational advisor to customers, internal stakeholders, and cross-functional partners. The ideal candidate is comfortable operating in ambiguity, understands payer–provider–vendor dynamics, and can translate medical PA complexity into repeatable, operationally sound solutions.

Key Responsibilities

• Serves as the primary point of contact for day-to-day oversight and management of multiple, complex, and strategic medical prior authorization and front end access programs, ensuring strong customer engagement, satisfaction, and retention
• Owns operational delivery of medical PA and front end access–related contract deliverables, ensuring adherence to contractual terms, service-level expectations, and regulatory requirements
• Acts as the initial escalation point for complex program issues, independently researching, resolving, and communicating corrective actions; escalates appropriately and partners with internal teams as needed
• Develops, documents, and maintains program plans for medical PA and access services, tracking progress against goals, identifying operational risks, and implementing mitigation strategies
• Leverages medical benefit, payer policy, and prior authorization workflow knowledge to proactively identify trends, risks, and improvement opportunities across assigned programs
• Proactively utilizes data and reporting (payer metrics, authorization outcomes, turnaround times, denial trends, volume forecasts) to inform recommendations and operational decisions
• Drives a culture of continuous improvement and operational excellence, leading process optimization efforts related to medical PA workflows, front-end services, and scaled support models
• Serves as a subject-matter resource for medical PA within the Account Operations organization, advising peers and mentoring less-experienced team members
• Partners cross-functionally with Product, Network Services, Implementation, Support, Legal, Compliance, and Sales to ensure alignment between customer needs, product capabilities, and operational delivery
• Participates in and/or leads strategic initiatives tied to the evolution of CMM’s medical PA, access, and front-end service offerings
• Represents Account Operations in customer-facing discussions, including operational reviews, issue resolution meetings, and planning sessions
• Travel to client sites and industry events as needed (approximately 10–15%)

About You

You are a seasoned account operations professional with hands-on medical prior authorization experience who thrives in complex, fast-paced environments. You are comfortable balancing operational rigor with relationship management and are energized by helping teams and customers navigate change. You bring a strong mix of analytical thinking, strategic problem-solving, and collaborative leadership.

You are trusted by customers and internal partners alike as someone who understands how medical PA really works—and how to make it better.

Basic Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent experience
• 7+ years of experience in account management, operations, or program leadership roles within healthcare
• Direct experience supporting medical prior authorization workflows, ideally within medical benefit (not pharmacy-only) programs
• Strong understanding of payer policies, provider workflows, and prior authorization lifecycle concepts
• Demonstrated success managing complex, multi-stakeholder programs and customer relationships
• Proven ability to lead through ambiguity, particularly during product evolution or operational change
• Excellent communication skills, with the ability to communicate effectively with operational, technical, clinical, and executive stakeholders

Critical Skills & Experience

• Expertise in medical PA operations, including pre-authorizations, determinations, appeals, and payer-provider workflows
• Strong operational and account leadership skills, including SLA oversight, risk mitigation, and service optimization
• Ability to analyze and interpret operational data to drive insights and recommendations
• Skilled in problem-solving complex customer and operational issues under pressure
• Track record of building trust and credibility across internal teams and external partners
• Strong project and process management capabilities in cross-functional environments
• Experience working with healthcare technology platforms, EHR-integrated workflows, or access solutions strongly preferred
• PACS certification preferred
• Working knowledge of Salesforce (SFDC) or similar CRM tools preferred

We are proud to offer a competitive compensation package at McKesson as part of our Total Rewards. This is determined by several factors, including performance, experience and skills, equity, regular job market evaluations, and geographical markets. The pay range shown below is aligned with McKesson's pay philosophy, and pay will always be compliant with any applicable regulations. In addition to base pay, other compensation, such as an annual bonus or long-term incentive opportunities may be offered. For more information regarding benefits at McKesson, please click here.

Our Base Pay Range for this position

McKesson has become aware of online recruiting-related scams in which individuals who are not affiliated with or authorized by McKesson are using McKesson’s (or affiliated entities, like CoverMyMeds or RxCrossroads) name in fraudulent emails, job postings or social media messages. In light of these scams, please bear the following in mind:

McKesson Talent Advisors will never solicit money or credit card information in connection with a McKesson job application.

McKesson Talent Advisors do not communicate with candidates via online chatrooms or using email accounts such as Gmail or Hotmail. Note that McKesson does rely on a virtual assistant (Gia) for certain recruiting-related communications with candidates.

McKesson job postings are posted on our career site: careers.mckesson.com.

McKesson is an Equal Opportunity Employer

McKesson provides equal employment opportunities to applicants and employees, without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, protected veteran status, disability, age, genetic information, or any other legally protected category. For additional information on McKesson’s full Equal Employment Opportunity policies, visit our Equal Employment Opportunity page.

McKesson is committed to being an Equal Employment Opportunity Employer and offers opportunities to all job seekers including job seekers with disabilities. If you need a reasonable accommodation to assist with your job search or application for employment, please contact us by sending an email to (United States) Disability_Accommodation@McKesson.com or (Canada) Accessibility@mckesson.ca. Resumes or CVs submitted to this email box will not be accepted.

Join us at McKesson!