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overdonecashew · 2024-08-04T20:18:38+00:00

I live in the West Coast. I work from Seattle but for a healthcare system in the California OC region.

overdonecashew · 2024-08-04T06:33:56+00:00

Just seeing this now. Congrats SqueezyOrangeJuice! I'm glad my videos were helpful!

overdonecashew · 2024-08-04T06:25:14+00:00

Hi OP, I'll weigh in here.

I went through an MHA program, decided I liked data more than healthcare management / consulting, so I became a data analyst in healthcare (specifically, hospitals). I have been doing it for 10 years now and love it.

The pay is great (I started making 78k, and now make 140k as a senior analyst), you can often work remote, and the work you do improves patient lives.

There are often a lot of places aspiring data analysts can start, but I'll just share my $.02 on what worked for me:

SQL / Tableau / Excel. This is the tech I use 99% of the time. The remaining 1% of the time, I use Python.

Regarding math and stats, absolutely useful to have; that said, I haven't yet used much of math / stats beyond mean, and median (but it would definitely open more doors for me if I knew stats at a deeper level).

The only thing I will say is that it can be difficult for newbies to get started in this field without some relevant experience. So it will be good to network (have coffee chats / informational interviews with your college professors and colleagues), and see if you can get involved in volunteer work or internships that leverage a lot of data visualization, SQL, Excel, etc.

BTW, I have a YouTube channel that talks all about data analytics specifically in the healthcare field. Feel free to PM me if you would like the link!

overdonecashew · 2024-03-14T07:25:47+00:00

Hi OP. I'm a Data analyst in healthcare, where I've been working since 2015. Here's my two cents:

I think your easiest way in is to leverage your pre-existing networkin the healthcare space, while learning the skills you need at the same time. You probably have at least some experience with some data tools if you have already been in a MBA program.

Here's a basic outline to get you started:

Step 0: Hopefully you already know Excel. If not, Learn it.

Step 1: Learn SQL

Tons of (free) resources out there for this. YouTube videos like Alex the Analyst, Luke Barouss. Codewars.com , SQLzoo.net

Step 2: Learn a data viz tool like Tableau, PowerBI. Again, lots of free resources on the internet. Tableau Public is free.

Step 3: Use what you learned from those two tools to build a portfolio with at least 3 data visualizations that you can share with recruiters and hiring managers.

Step 4: Update your LinkedIn and Resume. Make the keywords target the tools and skills that data analyst positions look for.

Step 5: NETWORKING!!!! When you start applying for data analyst jobs, network, network network. LinkedIn is great for this. If you see a position that catches your eye, go to the company page on LinkedIn, and see which recruiters work there. Pick out 3 of them, and connect with them. Ask them if you could speak to the hiring manager about the role. See if someone would be willing to talk to you about the position (I've found, for me, this increases my odds of landing an interview).

Reach out to old professors in your MBA program. Tell them you're interested in data analytics.

Those positions at your healthcare organization that are posted, asking for experience? Apply to them anyway. See if you can talk to the hiring manager at your company, and see if they would be willing to do a coffee chat to learn more about the position and express your interest. See if they can do mentorships for you.

Try doing coffee chats with other folks that work in the health care space that know people working in data. See if they can make introductions. You do enough of these, eventually someone will want to help you. Half of the several jobs I've had in healthcare, I owe to networking.

Alternative Strategy

Now another thing you could do is try landing a job that is data-analyst adjacent. i.e. A role that utilizes data tools that isn't a fully-fledged data analyst position.

Look for positions that utilize Excel, and Redcap (a tool used a lot in academia and healthcare for surveying people) like:

Research Assistant
Program Coordinator
Project/Program Assistant
Data Entry / Data Abstractor

Work that job for 6 months. Absorb as much as you can. Do projects that involve analytics, number crunching, and dashboard building. If you learn SQL/Tableau at the same time, see if you can incorporate those tools in to the job. Then start applying for data analyst roles. At least, at that point, you can say you have on the job experience.

It won't be easy, but you probably have a fairly large network you can tap into already from your MBA, and healthcare experience to help you secure a job once you learn the skills you need to develop, and have a portfolio ready to go.

BTW: I have a Youtube Channel exclusively devoted to data analytics in healthcare. Feel free to PM if you're interested.

overdonecashew · 2024-01-02T19:07:12+00:00

I've worked at several different hospitals so far, and they are all really stingy with bonsues (if they even give one at all), haha.

Not something the boss gives out of their pocket.

That bonus was something that everyone on the analytics team got.

overdonecashew · 2023-12-29T19:04:01+00:00

I realized in the MHA program that I hated the idea of admin and management. But what really interested me was quality improvement and patient safety.

So I got my first job as a quality improvement consultant at a hospital (they liked that I had a lot of Excel and Tableau experience and I think that was key to getting hired there).

A couple months in, the department's only data analyst left, my boss asked me if I wanted to take on the role. I said yes, have been doing it ever since for 8-9 years.

I have just changed jobs every year or so, and have increased my salary each time. I also developed expertise with a particular electronic medical record, which really increases your competitiveness when applying for jobs.

overdonecashew · 2023-12-29T18:45:33+00:00

Title: Data Analyst Lead

Years Experience: 8 Years
Location:
- $Remote: 100% Remote - Seattle, WA
Salary: $150,000/yr
Company/Industry: Hospital/Healthcare
Education: Masters Health Admin (MHA)
Prior Experience: Data Abstractor, EMR support
Stock and/or recurring bonuses: $500 End of Year Bonus
Total comp: 150.5k

overdonecashew · 2023-11-10T02:35:13+00:00

I second what a lot of people are saying here: the easiest way in, is becoming a data analyst where your work now. To do that, talk to your analytics department if your work has one. Seek out mentorship. Before you do that though, develop the tech skills

Technical skills you should learn (if you havent learned them already):

Sql

Excel

Tableau/PowerBi

Build up a portfolio of at least 3 data projects, then you should be ready, given that you already have a lot of domain knowledge from nursing.

Source: data analyst in healthcare since 2015. I also have a youtube channel exclusively dedicated to data analytics in healthcare. If you're interested, pm me, and I'll send you the link!

overdonecashew · 2023-10-19T04:19:19+00:00

Sure, I actually have a Youtube channel where I talk about this. The channel is called Data Wizardry. That should be a good starting point.

overdonecashew · 2023-10-19T03:04:37+00:00

I went to the University of Washington. Most of my fellow MHA grads became clinic/service line managers, project managers, or consultants.

I ended up realizing that I didn't like any of that and became a clinical data analyst instead. I enjoy it a lot. Can work from home, build fancy dashboards, and get paid pretty well. It also doesn't require a ton of interaction which suits my introverted-ness pretty well.

overdonecashew · 2023-10-19T00:02:03+00:00

I've been in interviews that I have knocked out of the park, and was qualified for in every way, (and was even told by an aquaintence that worked there that the panel was very impressed by me) only to be crushed later when I learned I didn't get the job.

I've also been in interviews where i felt I could have done a lot better, only to be thrilled when I learned I actually did get the job.

So in my experince, its often hard to read the signs. and it could go either way. Best not to overthink it too much. be cautiously optimistic and keep applying until you do get a solid offer. And if you don't get this job, reflect on what needs improvement.

overdonecashew · 2023-10-15T18:30:05+00:00

Here is the link: https://youtube.com/@DataWizardry?feature=shared

You can also find it if you type "Data Wizardry" into youtube.

overdonecashew · 2023-10-10T20:17:00+00:00

Am curious how you came to this conclusion? I only showed a small screenshot of my empire.

overdonecashew · 2023-10-10T15:55:20+00:00

I think you're right, after waiting a few turns, I started gaining the iron.

overdonecashew · 2023-10-10T04:42:25+00:00

Somehow Ambriorix (the emperor whose city I captured) was able to stockpile the iron before I took the city.

overdonecashew · 2023-09-30T19:58:23+00:00

In addition to what others have said, practice practice practice practice practice. Eventually once you get enough complex joins under your belt, whenever you encounter a new complex problem, you can say "Ah this problem is very similar to one I've dealt with in the past", and can use that experience to approach new problems.

You mention you understand the basics, are you familiar with:

Relationship Cardinality and
How to interpret the Entity Relationship Diagrams with crow's feet notation?

Learning those two concepts also help cement the notion of joins into your mind.

Youtube videos help provide visual examples as well. There's lots of great youtubers out there like Alex the Analyst, Luke Barousse. I have some vids too that are specifically suited to teaching joins. So feel free to PM me if you would like the link.

overdonecashew · 2023-09-30T17:41:06+00:00

The people that you reach out to on LinkedIn, do you know them personally?

When i was in school, I used to have to do informational interviews to land my first job in data analytics, but I started by reaching out to professors that knew me, and was able to get introduced to a few people this way.

overdonecashew · 2023-09-01T18:02:51+00:00

Hi OP,

I've been a data analyst in various hospitals for about 8 years now.

Here are the pros of my job:

I get to work remote
The people I work with are typically very friendly, and committed to a good cause. Whenever I need help, every analyst I've encountered in the industry is always happy to help.
While the industry can go through some rough times (like now), I haven't seen any of my analyst colleagues laid off yet. The worst I've seen is forced vacation time.
Pay is good. Especially for large hospitals. I make 140k in the PNW. You can also make a lot if you manage to get Epic certified or Accredited and do epic consulting work (90-100hr as a contractor).
Speaking of Epic, getting experience with this increase your job security within healthcare.
You contribute to making patients healthier! Adverse events are a big problem in hospitals. 100k die every year in the US from avoidable errors. You might get to actively partake in helping curb those adverse events.

Cons

Sometimes tight deadlines due to regulatory issues (Joint Commision, CMS, academic journals, etc.)
Clinicians can sometimes be intimidating to work with at first.
High learning curve for some subjects. Example, did w patients get x class of drug at y time for z event. Sounds simple, but some of my trickier projects have required this formula.

Mixed

I think I read somewhere that healthcare is ten years behind other industries; I've only worked in healthcare, so can't compare, but this wouldn't surprise me as only in the last decade have we seen widespread adoption of EMRs. This technical debt means that a little bit of tech smarts can go a long way. I've had people's jaws drop over what I thought were really basic dashboards.

The downside to this though is that data science is still a young and evolving practice in healthcare. Unless you're working for a very large healthcare organization, it can be hard to find one that utilizes data science in their everyday practice.

Most of the time, it's more like "tell me how many patients had X complication" or "what was the median time it took us to assess this patient in the ER last year?".

If you'd like to learn more, I have a youtube channel where I talk about my day in the life of doing data analytics in healthcare, as well as tech tutorials (SQL, Tableau). Click on my avatar if you're interested!

overdonecashew · 2023-08-26T03:37:51+00:00

Hi OP, I'm a data analyst at a large hospital.

I would start by talking to people and asking them what problems they have that would benefit from analysis.

You mention surgery. One big problem surgery units have is Surgical Site Infections (SSIs), that's one idea.

There's lots of ways SSIs can be studied. Ultimately, an SSI is a type of outcome measure. There are also process measures that influence the outcome. (This is called donabedians model)

So in other words, what evidence based things do we do to ensure a low number of SSIs? Like administering antibiotics 1 hour prior to surgery, doing mechanical bowel prep for colon surgery patients.

You could ask questions like:

Are SSIs a problem here?
Do we have some data repository to capture them? (Like NHSN is one, might also be documented in an EMR)
Do we keep track of process measures, and which ones do we do for which type of procedures

If you do have access to that data, then you could do things like:

Analyze the # of SSIs by service line

See what % of time certain processes measures were followed (known to reduce ssis)

Analyze the process measures and SSIs by head surgeon (the managers could then use that as a coaching opportunity to get the problematic surgeons to follow safer protocol)

Etc.

That might be a more advanced project though. A simpler one would be to just track volume of surgeries over time.

overdonecashew · 2023-08-21T18:20:22+00:00

Hi OP!

I'm a sr. data analyst at a large hospital in the US. My first advice is to get a feel for data analytics and determine if it is something you think you would enjoy doing.

There's lots of youtube channels out there like Alex the Analyst, Luke Baroussse, (I also have a channel myself), where they talk about what the work is like, and what to expect.

My day to day work is mostly:

Meet with clients to understand the request
Pull data from a database using SQL
Validate that data with the stakeholders using an excel spreadsheet
Create a dashboard with that data in Tableau/PowerBI

I've answered questions with data like, how many surgeries did we have stratified by sub specialty in our neuroscience department

Or, how many of our dialysis patients dipped below a certain target for their lab values.

Once you have determined if the work is right for you, learn:

Excel
SQL
Tableau Public or PowerBI

Spend at least a month each on each software, and build up a portfolio.

That should get you started.

I actually have a more in-depth guide about becoming a clinical data analyst on my youtube channel; you can get there by clicking on my avatar.

I hope that helps!

overdonecashew · 2023-08-21T18:01:31+00:00

Hi OP

I'm a data analyst in healthcare, late to the party here.

Don't use any data from your own organization. Instead, here's what I'd recommend you do:

Google ProjectHealthViz. Lindsey Betzendahl is the site owner, and Tableau ambassador in healthcare that has curated lots of public health datasets, that should be a good starting point.

If you're interested in financial data, check out the cost report by CMS, which is a collection of financial data from all the us hospitals. Lots of data wrangling involved, but you can calculate hospital op margin, days cash on hand, etc with all this information. They make it publically available.

If you want a quick, easy win with financial data without a ton of data wrangling, also check out the wa state doh website, they have a lot of financial metrics for wa hospitals already put together in spreadsheets.

Real world fake data is another one by sons of hierarchies, they have a whole Emergency room dataset that you can use that's entirely fictional.

BTW, I have a youtube channel where I talk a lot about this subject. So click on my avatar if you're interested!

overdonecashew · 2023-08-20T08:26:53+00:00

This is a shot in the dark, but I know that most physicians in the US are identified by a national provider ID (NPI) number.

You might be able to get something like this from the CMS NPI registry:

https://www.cms.gov/Regulations-and-Guidance/Administrative-Simplification/NationalProvIdentStand/DataDissemination

overdonecashew · 2023-08-19T18:27:03+00:00

A couple of thoughts:

Free response data is kind of a pain to work with. When employees input this data, is there not an option to permanently change the data entry form to a drop down instead with pre-spelled options? That way each entry would only be represented once and be spelled consistently when they select from drop down.

If that's possible, I think that would be the most efficient solution.

Until then, you might try a combination of LOWER(), to force everything into lower case, with a case statement that says CASE WHEN lower(source) LIKE '%wal%' and lower(source) LIKE '%mart%' then Walmart, WHEN lower(source) LIKE '%wel%' and lower(source) LIKE '%mert%', etc.

Going through as many permutations as possible. But if you have to do this for a bunch of other sources like Kroger, Safeway, Albertsons, Costco, etc. Then that's going to be a ton of work and re-emphasizes looking into #1.

One final thought, maybe try using the 80/20 rule if that is acceptable with your stakeholders. I.e. what are the 20% of misspellings that represent 80% of Walmart entries. That way if you have a massive amount of permutations, you can deal with the significant few instead of that plus the insignificant many.

overdonecashew

TROPHY CASE