At UPMC, Life Changing Medicine is our mission, but there’s a lot more than just medicine that goes into providing outstanding patient care. Across the organization, our many teams leverage analytics to measure performance, identify patterns, and spot areas of opportunity to improve the care we provide to patients in our communities. UPMC’s Insurance Services Division (ISD) is one of those teams whose analysts work to understand, innovate, and improve the products and services UPMC provides.
Analytics roles at UPMC offer professionals the ability to flex their technical, business, and critical thinking skill sets every day. The opportunities are endless, the amount of data to dig into is vast, and the stellar talent and enthusiastic culture make solving complex problems a rewarding challenge. But don’t just take it from us – hear from a few UPMC analysts about why they love what they do!
"At UPMC, our fundamental focus is Life Changing Medicine. Good medicine is rooted in good data and information. And I am proud to be part of working with the data that informs our medicine and our care."
— Randy, Sr. BI Developer
Randy: Advancing Good Medicine with Good Data
What I enjoy most about my current role is the balance between science and art. First comes the highly technical aspect of acquiring and prepping the data, but then comes the more artistic aspect of the layout and design of the visualization. It’s so satisfying to watch people experience the difference between trying to cipher something from numbers arranged in columns and rows, versus interacting with data according to their needs.
Recently I completed a data dashboard that has the potential to shape marketing campaign design and execution, and it represents another step toward personalizing interactions with UPMC Health Plan members according to their unique needs. We want UPMC Health Plan’s marketing to be engaging, promote health and wellness, and inform the management of significant health concerns for all individuals. At UPMC, our fundamental focus is Life Changing Medicine. Good medicine is rooted in good data and information. And I am proud to be part of working with the data that informs our medicine and our care.
Sandy: Proactively Meeting Patient Needs
I appreciate being a part of UPMC Community HealthChoices (launched in 2018) and navigating the challenges that come with being the newest service from the Health Plan and one that serves all of Pennsylvania. Getting our systems up and running has taken a lot of work, but it’s an energizing process. Since 2020, I’ve also been involved with COVID-19 testing and outreach tracking, compiling multiple sources to see if certain high-risk segments of our population were receiving vaccinations and to understand where we needed to coordinate outreach.
Analytics isn’t a patient-facing role, but we’re always thinking about how we can use our data to help UPMC teams manage their patient caseloads and track their progress. Beyond that, the people we serve can face a lot of challenges in and outside of the home, and we’re finding ways to support them proactively. For example, if someone is suddenly admitted to a nursing facility after a fall, we can use data we’ve gathered in the past to see whether this participant might be at a higher risk for remaining in that facility long-term because they lack the support needed to move back into the community on their own. Studying this data helps us understand what a patient might need to return to daily life as seamlessly as possible.
Natalie: Supporting Sound Decisions
There’s so much that I love about working for UPMC Community Care Behavioral Health, specifically within the Decision Support & Data Analytics group. My team uses clinical data, claims data, authorizations, and other sources to summarize data and highlight trends that can help support clinical and programmatic decisions at UPMC. This kind of efficient data production and delivery frees up resources for staff in departments that work directly with UPMC Health Plan members and provides crucial information about the effectiveness of the services UPMC provides.
I’ve learned so much about data in my time here, and my skills as a coder continue to evolve. I’m always eager for new challenges to help me learn and grow as an analyst, a member of my team, and a part of UPMC. When working on a project, I am entrusted and encouraged to follow my natural inclination to problem-solve and think critically. As much as I feel valued as an employee, I know that my life outside of work and my personal well-being is a priority, too — maintaining that balance is highly valued at UPMC.
Garry: Improving Community Care
These are exciting times in the Business Intelligence (BI) world, with UPMC’s ongoing transition to the Snowflake and IDAP data analysis platforms. We are now able to design tools and data models with much larger and more complex data than we had in the past, which provides a great opportunity to rethink how we deliver reporting and analysis to our leaders at UPMC.
Our team is involved in a few health equity initiatives in collaboration with other areas of the business. It’s a challenge to translate claims data to actionable insights, but I am always encouraged by the enthusiasm colleagues across the organization have for partnering with our team to improve the health and well-being of our communities, and we’re happy to support that with data and analysis where we can.
Jeffrey: Making Sense of Meaningful Data
My favorite part about being a data scientist is helping colleagues make sense of their data, and what it means in a practical (not just abstract) sense. Analytical notions can be perplexing, and not everyone has adequate time to dedicate to learning and applying these concepts in practice.
On the Marketing & Innovation team, my primary focus is to make recommendations to ensure that the way UPMC Health Plan communicates with its members is clear and relevant and helps our members to be better equipped to make positive health choices. Many of our member-oriented campaigns urge UPMC Health Plan members to manage their personal health by receiving a cancer screening or scheduling a health coaching session, for example. I aim to support these messages and help them get to the right people at the right time.
"My favorite part about being a data scientist is helping colleagues make sense of their data, and what it means in a practical (not just abstract) sense."
— Jeffrey, Sr. Data Scientist
Thanks to a strong community of analysts like Randy, Sandy, Natalie, Garry, and Jeffrey, UPMC stays on top of the latest tools, techniques, and training needed to elevate our analytic and business intelligence capabilities. Interested in joining them in this behind-the-scenes role of Life Changing Medicine? Explore opportunities in analytics at UPMC at the button below!
