Rutgers Center for State Health Policy, a unit within the Institute for Health, Health Care Policy and Aging Research, is recruiting a highly skilled, full-time data analyst who will be assigned to work within the NJ Division of Medical Assistance & Health Services’ (“DMAHS” or “Medicaid”) Business Intelligence Unit (BIU) located in Hamilton Township, NJ. The data analyst assists in the development, staffing, and operations of the BIU, expanding the current data analytic capabilities of DMAHS and enabling the rapid identification of emerging trends in enrollment, eligibility, service utilization, and other information needed to gain actionable intelligence on ways to improve the quality and efficiency of health care services delivered to clients within the NJ FamilyCare program.
Key Duties
- Engages in detailed research projects undertaken at the request of the DMAHS Director/Assistant Commissioner or senior management to inform the future direction of the NJ FamilyCare program.
- Participates in the development of business intelligence tools to support the Office of Business Intelligence, including interactive dashboards, slide presentations, standardized queries for various performance metrics, and other business intelligence deliverables.
- Develops ad-hoc reports from the State’s data warehouse in response to requests for information made pursuant to the Open Public Records Act, press inquiries, and inquiries from various sources within State government, including for example, individuals from DMAHS, other DHS divisions (including DHS senior management), Department of Health, Department of Treasury, Department of Children and Families, and the Office of the Governor, provided that only HIPAA “safe harbor” de-identified information can generally be provided outside of DMAHS.
- Supports the Office of Business Intelligence and the State’s data warehouse in the linking of various data sets that may be useful for developing methods of healthcare quality improvement and cost containment in NJ FamilyCare.
- Provides assistance to various DMAHS business units in performing statistical sampling required by state or federal law or statute.
- Performs tasks under general supervision and may be assigned a specific area of responsibility.
Required Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities
- Strong work ethic and problem-solving skills, who take initiative and enjoy making sense of complex data, and who have strong attention to detail and scientific curiosity.
- Sufficient experience to work independently and lead various BIU activities.
- Good collaborator, with the ability and motivation to progress rapidly in assimilating and applying advanced techniques in statistical analysis and programming, complex data management, and systems improvement strategies.
- Exceptional organizational skills with a keen eye for detail and accuracy.
- Ability to build and/or adapt complex programs (e.g., hospital quality and patient safety measures) for innovative uses; requires the ability to understand and revise sophisticated bio-statistical programming.
- Ability to effectively interpret supervisor’s directions and communicate progress and problems in a timely way.
- Capacity to create visually appealing and understandable presentation of data.
- Work productively and cooperatively with project team members in a highly collaborative, supportive environment.
- Ability to develop and maintain clear and organized methodological documentation.
- Possess strong interpersonal, written and oral communication skills.
- Must have exceptional time management skills and the ability to effectively prioritize and manage multiple projects and deadlines.
- Ability to exercise sound judgement in making critical decisions.
- Possess strong “data hygiene” skills with an understanding of best practices for validating own programs and output as well as being able to replicate and validate the work of other analysts.
- Ability to establish and maintain productive and successful relationships with the appropriate agencies and external DMAHS vendors with regard to information processing requirements.
- Knowledge of the development and maintenance of systems documentation including feasibility reports, specifications, design documentation, test scripts, data, etc.
- Knowledge of statistical theory, practices, and techniques, business intelligence and reporting tools, and their application to the analysis and evaluation of administrative procedures and processes.
Preferred Qualifications
- Masters degree in relevant disciplines including statistics/biostatistics, epidemiology, health informatics/IT, policy analysis/administration, public health, economics, engineering, computer science, or information security.
- Experience working with and analyzing complex hospital or other healthcare provider billing/EHR data, Medicaid/Medicare claims and other health utilization data for research, program evaluation, and policy development within an academic or government agency setting.
- Proven ability to work with the processes and technologies of other large administrative health and financial data.
- Experience building NCQA HEDIS quality measures or other similar healthcare quality indicators (i.e. AHRQ Quality Indicators, PQA) and/or alternative payment models.
- Extensive knowledge of data management and manipulation using a combination of the following tools: MS Access, Excel, SQL, Python, R, SAS, STATA, geographic mapping software or other business/data analytics tool.
- Ability to analyze and report data using statistical and Business Intelligence dashboard tools such as Tableau (Server and Prep), SAP BI.
- Ability to prepare clear, sound, accurate, and informative statistical and narrative reports containing findings, analyses, conclusions, and recommendations.
- A record of accomplishments in the area of health data analytics.
Minimum Education and Experience
- Bachelors degree in relevant disciplines including statistics/biostatistics, epidemiology, health informatics/IT, policy analysis/administration, public health, economics, engineering, computer science, or information security.
- A minimum of five (5) years of professional experience querying, analyzing, and reporting on complex healthcare data sets utilizing such programs such as Access, SAS, SQL, SAP BI or equivalent.
- Note that an advanced degree can be substituted for 2 years of experience.
