Statistician

NCQA is a non-profit organization devoted to improving health and health care in the United States. NCQA's pioneered health plan accreditation, primary care recognition, and the HEDIS quality measures used to evaluate quality and equity. Research and Analysis is an interdisciplinary team comprised of Washington DC-based and remote team members who collaborate on a combination of intra- and extramurally funded projects focused on health care quality. The team pulls on a base of knowledge about quality that draws on clinical guidelines, best practices in quality improvement, health informatics, public health guidance, and insights from health services and implementation sciences.

The Statistician role is primarily tasked with conducting data analysis for various NCQA programs and using those analyses to interpret patterns of health care quality and support potential health policy recommendations. We expect the ideal candidate will:

• Possess strong interest in conducting analysis for the purposes of quantifying and comparing outcomes in a variety of health care quality-related applications, with potential use in health care policy decision making.
• Derive satisfaction and joy from translating large quantities of data and metadata into summaries and distilling trends and patterns to better understand health care quality-related issues.
• 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 process from start to finish, working with a variety of data sources.
• Can code at an expert level in SAS or R, able to quickly learn other coding languages if the need arises.
• Lead in the extraction, processing, and preparation of data for analysis and optimization of outputs for interpretation and visualization.
• Be communicative and collaborative; gather input from relevant stakeholders; work effectively alone and in teams.
• Have experience creating informative data visualizations that are useful to and easily interpreted by their intended audiences.
• Be adept at prioritizing, re-prioritizing, and completing multiple projects and tasks.
• Support internal and external customers as well as the Research and Analysis team with excellent documentation.
• Provide analytic support for NCQA's programs and high priority strategic projects including new product development, contract deliverables from federal and state customers, State of Health Care Quality report, CAHPS and HOS surveys.
• Develop content expertise with NCQA's data (e.g., HEDIS) and NCQA's recognition programs.

Primary Responsibilities

• Independently and effectively conduct programming tasks and statistical analysis including the preparation and cleaning of data, implementation and refinement of statistical methods, preparation of formatted tables of results, creation of data summaries, reports, and other outputs, and verification of the accuracy of results.
• Present analytic results orally; develop presentations, reports, summaries, and other documents in writing for internal and external customers that incorporate descriptions of methods, relevant literature, and other background material to provide context.
• Participate in quality assurance processes and review code, outputs, tables, and charts. Complete all documentation and follow department standardized processes.
• Support the creation and refinement of study designs and analysis plans; be able to develop and implement code to support various projects.
• Support the preparation of memos and reports to contribute to knowledge management and documentation.

Supplementary Responsibilities

• Enhance NCQA's reputation for data analysis in performance measurement through presentations at NCQA's advisory meetings, publications, and other reports as requested.
• Support NCQA's research and performance measurement activities by investigating and outlining data collection needs related to the project.
• Can discern noise from signal within the data, understand what the data represents, and recommend the best possible ways to analyze it. Able to spot trends and patterns and can discern noise from signal.
• Development of analytical plans, such as data collection design, program design, selection of statistical methods, creation of project timelines, and development of formats for presenting results to meet customer needs.

Requirements

• Master's or Doctoral degree with experience in health services research, applied statistics, quantitative social science, or a combination of education and experience which demonstrates the necessary skills and abilities required to succeed in the role.
• Strong programming skills in either SAS or R. Certification a plus, knowledge of other statistical programming languages a plus.
• Working with claims-based data a plus.
• Proficiency with SQL a plus.
• At least 3 years of experience analyzing datasets.
• Highly proficient in word processing and spreadsheet applications.
• Skilled at applying statistical concepts such as developing and applying univariate and multivariate modeling techniques and 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).