Senior Healthcare Data Analyst

Senior Healthcare Data Research Analyst

Located in the heart of Atlanta's famous Druid Hills, the Center for Disease Control is adjacent to Emory University in Northeast Atlanta. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) collaborates to create the expertise, information, and tools that people and communities need to protect their health through health promotion, prevention of disease, injury and disability, and preparedness for new health threats.

Overview

The Senior Healthcare Data Research Analyst will utilize electronic health records to identify and describe Lyme Disease diagnoses.

Responsibilities

Develop a specific data query to identify all potential Lyme Disease diagnoses within the patient population during a specified period of time (2016-2019). Evaluate the ability of the query tool and/or technique to identify patients truly diagnosed and treated for Lyme Disease. Ensure trained medical chart reviews will perform manual reviews on a subset of all initially identified patient encounters. Provide the number of chart reviews performed shall be based on the number of identified potential Lyme Disease diagnoses, and thus cannot be specified a priori, but should not exceed 800. Provide a de-identified patient-level line list of all possible diagnoses (including associated demographics, billing codes, clinical findings, laboratory data, and treatment information) for analysis, including information on chart review findings for that subset of records. Be affiliated with a research institution linked to a large healthcare system in the Upper Midwest and will consequently have access to patient-level data for a large number of patients with Lyme disease. Collaborate to write a protocol for human subjects research review. Obtain local Institutional Review Board (IRB) approval and share approval documentation. Develop a draft query to identify records of all patients in the vendor's associated health care system that could potentially have been diagnosed and treated for Lyme disease. This will include queries of Lyme-disease laboratory test orders, Lyme disease and related condition diagnosis codes, and free text string queries, as applicable. Collaborate to finalize the query. Apply the final query to electronic medical records during 2016-2019 to create a patient-level dataset of potential Lyme disease diagnoses. Shall provide a dataset with a descriptive summary of the findings to include: patterns of demographics, diagnosis codes, treatments prescribed, and Lyme disease laboratory test orders and results that can be used in turn to inform approach to sample selection for medical chart review. Create a standardized tool for chart reviews with input from the Government to effectively capture findings relevant to defining a Lyme disease diagnosis. Collaborate in the development of a scientifically sound approach to the selection of patient charts for manual review and verification of diagnosis. Perform all associated chart reviews (not to exceed 800 in number). Provide a final clean copy of the de-identified dataset of all patient records. The de-identified dataset will include: all associated demographic, clinical, treatment, coding, and laboratory variables, as well as the appended variables that indicate the subset of records subjected to chart review and associated findings, per step 4. The final dataset provided shall be accompanied by a corresponding data dictionary and summary document detailing query language and associated assumptions made during the course of data compilation. Shall participate in regular telephone meetings to discuss each iterative step in creating the final dataset.

Requirements

Shall have at least 5 years of experience in healthcare data analysis, including epidemiologic studies. Shall have at least 2 years of experience in conducting analyses utilizing the data system of the health care institution. Shall have prior collaboration with CDC on research related to Lyme and other tickborne diseases is strongly encouraged.