Senior Statistician

Job Summary
In accordance with the Mission, Vision and Values, and strategic directions of PHSA, safety, including both patient and employee safety, is a priority and a responsibility shared by everyone at PHSA. As such, the requirement to continuously improve quality and safety is inherent in all aspects of this position.

The Senior Statistician is responsible for conducting analytical activities that support business intelligence, policy and/or clinical research and evidence-based decision making for a designated program area of the Provincial Health Services Authority (PHSA). This position, reporting to the Manager, Provincial Lead, or Designate will undertake self-directed and collaborative analyses, interpretation and reporting of designated program related data for both internal and external stakeholders. This position supports the development and monitoring of performance indicators for planning, implementation and evaluation of designated programs in BC. In addition to the preparation of standard reports, this position prepares periodic summaries and detailed analyses of trends and developments using appropriate statistical modeling tools and tests. This is a highly skilled position that is responsible for providing expert advice to staff, program managers, PHSA senior management and external stakeholders, including but not limited to the Ministry of Health (MoH), care providers in the BC health authorities, Canadian Blood Services, and the Public Health Agency of Canada.

Duties/Accountabilities

• Develops detailed technical project plans to support the program area's strategic planning, research and quality of care evaluations.
• Performs volume projections to assist in the development of budgeted volumes by year and by site, and monitors and reports on the variance of actual volumes versus budgeted/projected volumes on a regular basis.
• Provides leadership to team members through the provision of technical expertise and the facilitation and demonstration of the principles of team work and collaboration.
• Provides technical expertise and advice on statistical analyses for a variety of documents including standard and ad-hoc reports, briefing notes, presentations, summaries and papers. As directed by the Manager, Provincial Lead, or Designate provides technical expertise to internal stakeholders by providing consultations on study design, data standards, statistical analyses, and appropriate presentation for reports and other publications.
• Coordinates internal and external data requests for planning and decision-making and/or research and policy by performing duties including: managing data requests, recommending appropriate statistical analyses, analyzing, interpreting and presenting complex statistical analyses so the results can be used by senior management in PHSA, MoH, and the other Health Authorities for informed decision making.
• Conducts analyses of linked health data to evaluate health outcomes of patients and the effectiveness and quality of treatments and interventions.
• Undertakes self-directed analyses of data quality and data validity for the purpose of proposing improvements in data processing and data handling.
• Responsible for monitoring trends, reporting variations, identifying outliers and formulating suggestions for improvement, under the direction of the Manager, Provincial Lead or Designates.
• Provides technical expertise regarding data architecture and data standards for the development and maintenance of databases to facilitate accurate and efficient reporting, data quality and monitoring and/or research.

Qualifications
A level of education, training and experience equivalent to a Master Degree in Statistics, Biostatistics, Data Science, Health Informatics, Operations Research, or a related program and a minimum of five (5) to seven (7) years of recent related experience in data analytics or statistics, as required, and/or the health information field in a large, complex organization. Advanced knowledge of descriptive statistics, statistical inference and modeling using statistical software such as SPSS, R, and /or SAS. Demonstrated ability to develop complex and customized queries, particularly SQL queries, for relational databases, as required. Applied experience with business intelligence tools (e.g. Tableau, IBM Cognos, Microsoft Power BI), as required. Strong analytical, problem-solving and system analysis skills including the ability to comprehend complex issues and related data/information. Demonstrated ability to develop complex and customized queries for relational databases, as required. Ability to function in a self-directed manner and handle multiple concurrent tasks. Strong communication skills, both written and oral. Demonstrated interpersonal skills to support working with and supervising a variety of people, as required. Demonstrated skill as a leader, coach and change agent. Ability to prioritize workload to meet deadlines.