Sr Clinical Data Scientist

In 2020 united in a fierce commitment to deliver the highest quality care and exceptional patient experience Virginia Mason and CHI Franciscan Health came together as natural partners to build a new health system centered around the patient: Virginia Mason Franciscan Health. Our combined system builds upon the scale and expertise of our nearly 300 sites of care including 11 hospitals and nearly 5000 physicians and providers. Together we are empowered to make an even greater impact on the health and well-being of our communities.

This job is responsible for leading collaborative efforts to design, develop, test, implement, and maintain data modeling and analytics solutions for use in clinical, quality, and population health improvement. This includes representing data in contexts to include reports, dashboards, quantitative analytic models, and interactive analysis tools. An incumbent will conceptualize and develop analytic solutions to help address Virginia Mason Franciscan Health’s (VMFH) most complex challenges using a variety of data science, analytic techniques, and tools. Work includes anticipating and supporting the information needs of VMFH clinical and business partners, enabling data-driven decision-making, and contributing to a culture of collaborative analytics throughout the organization. Working with front-line clinicians, administrative leaders and information systems personnel, an incumbent will expand advanced clinical analytics capabilities and relevant components of the data and analytics infrastructure while maintaining high standards of data governance in alignment with industry and regulatory standards.

Responsibilities include:

• Leads the design, development, testing, deployment and maintenance of clinical dashboards, reports, data access tools and analytic models that integrate a wide range of clinical, operational, outcome, and financial data; effectively communicates results of complex analyses to diverse stakeholders.
• Facilitates data-influenced decision making across VMFH; creates actionable insights from data to assist all levels of management and clinical leadership in making key business and clinical quality decisions; effectively communicates results of complex analyses to diverse stakeholders.
• Advances VMFH’s clinical analytics competencies and infrastructure by leveraging computational, quantitative and analytical skills; becomes a recognized internal subject matter expert and consultant on specific clinical quality and population health measures, data sources and analysis tools.
• Develops, validates, applies and maintains scalable data models including visualizations, statistical models, and predictive/prescriptive (machine learning) models.
• Continuously reviews and updates deliverables to align with current regulatory, contracted, and other evidence-based quality metrics.
• Researches and applies industry best practices in clinical and population health analytics and data management; identifies and anticipates opportunities to leverage analytics throughout VMFH.
• Exercises a leadership role in working directly with clinicians and business intelligence staff to assure the integrity of clinical data used for analytics and reporting; leads initiatives to define and validate new clinical data mart tables.
• Actively mentors colleagues to expand the collective analytics and data science aptitude of the organization.
• Working knowledge of hierarchal and relational database design and application development including but not limited to SQL server, SSIS, VBA, ODBC, AWS.
• Familiar with EMR reporting and business intelligence tools, and expertise with respect to data architecture, technical documentation and end-user training/support.
• Consults with stakeholders to discuss/understand business needs/requirements and identify viable technological solutions/opportunities; prepares detailed specifications/record layouts and/or current/revised work flow diagrams from which interfaces/applications/databases will be written.
• Designs, develops (including complex coding) and documents interfaces/applications/databases that address user needs and meet professional development standards; develops scenarios and scripts to test new/updated tools to ensure desired functionality and that results produced are in line with objectives; troubleshoots/debugs problematic performance/issues; transfers programs to production environment when testing has been completed successfully; prepares and conducts end-user training as necessary.
• Maintains/updates interfaces/applications/databases once implemented; makes changes in tables/logic and tools; adds and deletes codes and other information; works with IT staff and other resources when systems are being upgraded to identify impact on existing interfaces.
• Serves as point-person for all issues and/or malfunctions involving the technical aspects of the assigned programs/tools; receives general alerts in the event of a problem, runs internal diagnostics to identify problems, troubleshoots and identifies causes/issues and executes timely resolution that may involve reconfiguration or re-programming of internal code.
• Provides internal consulting for departments in overall data management concepts/tools and select special applications to facilitate automation of end-user processes and workflows.
• Performs necessary procedures to ensure the safety of information systems assets and to protect systems from intentional or inadvertent access or destruction; implements security procedures to accommodate system and user requirements.
• Performs related duties as required.

• Master’s degree in a quantitative discipline (MS in mathematics, statistics, health services research, informatics, epidemiology or research-oriented MPH) and five years of related work experience in quantitative data analysis, including two years in a healthcare context.
• PhD, prior experience working with industry standard clinical quality measures and pay-for-performance metrics (e.g. HEDIS, NQF, PQRS, MACRA-MIPS, CMS/Joint Commission eCQM, etc.) and development/application of predictive analytics (e.g. developing and validating machine learning algorithms) are strongly preferred.
• Or any equivalent combination of education and experience which provides the required knowledge, skills and abilities to perform the essential functions of the position.