Data Scientist

The Data Scientist will be tasked with conducting data analysis for various NCQA program project and using the analysis to interpret patterns of health care quality and potential health policy recommendations. We expect the ideal candidate will:

• Strong interest in conducting analysis for the purposes of comparative information and potential use in health care policy making (e.g., areas in health care that have stagnated, improved, or worsening performance).
• Derive satisfaction and joy from translating large quantities of meta data into summaries and distilling trends and patterns to understand health care quality issues or improvement.
• Be naturally curious about and invested in data or statistical methods; have strong analytical skills; be logical and detail oriented.
• Be comfortable with statistical programming and enjoy the journey, from start to finish, working with a variety of data sources.
• Be communicative and collaborative; gather input from relevant stakeholders; work effectively alone and in teams.
• Have experience creating informative and engaging data visualizations.
• Be adept at prioritizing and completing multiple projects and tasks.
• Support internal and external customers as well as the analytic team with excellent documentation.
• Provide analytic support for NCQA's programs and high priority strategic projects including new analytic product development, contract deliverables from federal and state customers, State of Health Care Quality report, CAHPS and HOS surveys.
• Develop content expertise for data collected for NCQA's. Lead in the extraction, reformatting of data for analysis and optimization of outputs for interpretation and visualization.

Responsibilities:

• Present analytic results orally, develop PowerPoint presentations, and other documents in writing for internal and external customers, incorporating descriptions of methods, relevant literature, and other background material to provide context for the results.
• Independently and effectively conducts programming tasks and statistical analysis including preparation and cleaning of data, implementation and refinement of statistical methods, preparation of formatted tables of results, creation of databases and other outputs, and verification of the accuracy of results.
• Participate in quality assurance processes and reviews code, outputs tables and charts. Complete all documentation and follow department standardized processes.
• Leads, designs, plans, and executes programming approaches to support various development projects. Can code at an expert level in applications in SAS or R, able to quickly learn other coding languages as needed.
• Enhance NCQA reputation for data analysis in performance measurement through presentation at NCQA's advisory meetings, publications, and other reports as requested. Present analytic results orally and in writing to customers and other researchers incorporating descriptions of methods, relevant literature, and other background material to provide context for the results.
• Support NCQA's research and performance measurement activities by investigating data and developing data design and data structures related to the project. Looks at the data from different angles, determine what the data means and recommends the best possible way to analyze it. Spots trends and patterns and determine what is noise and what is good data. In consultation with senior data scientists, support the development of analytical plans, such as database design, program design, selection of statistical methods, creation of project timelines, and development of formats for presenting results to meet customer needs.
• Support the preparation of memos and close out reports to contribute to knowledge management and documentation.

Minimum Requirements:

• Master's or Doctoral degree with experience in health services research, applied statistics, sociology, or a combination of education and experience which demonstrates the necessary skills and abilities required to succeed in data analysis.
• Strong programming skills in at least one of the following data coding languages - SAS, R, and SQL required. Certification a plus, knowledge of other statistical or data analysis programming languages a plus. Working with claims-based data a plus.
• Strong programming background, 3 years (+) experience analyzing datasets.
• Proficiency in statistical software packages such as SAS, SPSS, STATA or R. Profound knowledge of word processing, spreadsheet and database applications. Skilled at developing and applying univariate and multivariate modeling techniques, hypothesis testing

NCQA is committed to Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. We are an Equal Opportunity Employer/Protected Veterans/Individuals with Disabilities

NCQA is a drug free workplace. NCQA recruits, hires, trains and promotes individuals, and administers any and all personnel actions, without regard to race, color, religion, national origin, age, sex, pregnancy, citizenship, familial status, disability status, veteran status, genetic information, or other protected statuses under applicable state and federal laws.

NCQA will not discharge or in any other manner discriminate against employees or applicants because they have inquired about, discussed, or disclosed their own pay or the pay of another employee or applicant. However, employees who have access to the compensation information of other employees or applicants as a part of their essential job functions cannot disclose the pay of other employees or applicants to individuals who do not otherwise have access to compensation information, unless the disclosure is (a) in response to a formal complaint or charge, (b) in furtherance of an investigation, proceeding, hearing, or action, including an investigation conducted by the employer, or (c) consistent with the contractor's legal duty to furnish information. 41 CFR 60-1.35(c)