Senior Health Services Research Analyst

About the role

The Heath Services Research Center is a Larner College of Medicine Dean’s Office department and this position will report to the Director of the Center. Its role is not simply coaching or training others but assuring the scientific integrity of their work.

Responsibilities

• Combine advanced technical, data, statistical, and econometric expertise with extensive knowledge of the health care system, reimbursement, payer policy, and the strengths and limitations of administrative data.
• Exercise substantial autonomy in partnership with principal investigators to shape study design, analytic strategy, data acquisition and management, interpretation, and dissemination.
• Lead analyses using large Medicare, Medicaid, and commercial claims and enrollment data; build longitudinal relational data resources using SQL; link claims with surveys, provider files, geographic data, and other external sources; and develop defensible methods for identifying rural providers, populations, and markets.
• Lead analyses of complex survey data using established survey weights and design variables and conduct advanced analyses using SAS and Stata.
• Resolve novel, ambiguous, or high-impact methodological and data problems affecting multiple studies or partners.
• Establish analytic standards; assure quality, reproducibility, security, and scientific integrity; and direct or review work performed by analysts, collaborators, consultants, and subcontractors.
• Represent the analytic program with funders, agencies, data partners, and scientific collaborators and provide authoritative contributions to proposals, reports, presentations, and peer-reviewed publications.

Requirements

• Master’s degree in health services research, health economics, epidemiology, biostatistics, public health, public policy, economics, statistics, or a related field and at least 5 -10 years of progressively responsible experience conducting complex quantitative health services or health policy research; or an equivalent combination of education and extensive relevant experience.
• Expert-level SAS, Stata, and SQL experience, including construction and management of complex relational and longitudinal analytic files, data linkage, quality assurance, econometric and health policy analysis, and reproducible documentation.
• Advanced expertise analyzing complex survey data using established survey weights, strata, clusters, replicate weights, and appropriate variance-estimation methods, including integration of survey and administrative data.
• Demonstrated experience identifying rural providers, populations, and geographic markets in administrative data and applying rural definitions appropriately to research questions.
• Demonstrated experience serving as the principal analytic expert for highly complex studies or a portfolio of projects, establishing analytic strategy and standards, allocating analytic resources, and delivering high-quality products with substantial autonomy.
• Demonstrated ability to resolve novel, ambiguous, or high-impact analytic problems, evaluate and defend alternative approaches, and implement improvements that strengthen methods, systems, or products across multiple projects or collaborators.
• Knowledge of HIPAA, data use agreements, and data security practices applicable to confidential research data.
• Effective written, oral, and interpersonal communication skills, including the ability to explain complex methods and findings to technical and nontechnical audiences and collaborate with internal and external partners.

Qualifications

• Doctoral degree in health services research, health economics, epidemiology, biostatistics, public health, public policy, economics, statistics, or a related field and at least 10 – 15 years of progressively responsible experience conducting complex quantitative health services or health policy research; or an equivalent combination of education and extensive relevant experience.
• Experience with rural health, health policy, health care access, quality, financing, delivery system transformation, or evaluation research.
• Experience contributing to grant or contract proposals, budgets, IRB materials, data acquisition, and data use agreements.
• Record of contributing to policy briefs, sponsor reports, presentations, or peer-reviewed publications.
• Experience mentoring analysts or students and reviewing analytic code and work products.