SAS Programmer Job Listing at Fresenius Medical Care in Waltham, MA

Healthcare

PURPOSE AND SCOPE:

Supports FMCNA’s mission, vision, core values and customer service philosophy. Adheres to the FMCNA Compliance Program, including following all regulatory and FMS policy requirements.

Develops moderate to complex SAS programs on a daily basis to support business operations in the management of the delivery of care (dialysis, medications, etc.) to dialysis patients. Prepares new SAS programs for automation. Conducts customized reporting and analysis of clinical data including reporting of patient outcomes, monitoring of medication and laboratory utilization, and analysis of other data as needed to meet the individual and changing needs of various internal customers.

DUTIES / ACTIVITIES:

CUSTOMER SERVICE:

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  Responsible for driving the FMS culture through values and customer service standards.
  
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  Accountable for outstanding customer service to all external and internal customers.
  
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  Develops and maintains effective relationships through effective and timely communication.
  
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  Takes initiative and action to respond, resolve and follow up regarding customer service issues with all customers in a timely manner.

PRINCIPAL RESPONSIBILITIES AND DUTIES

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  Utilizes advanced knowledge and expertise to independently develop and initiate moderate to complex SAS programs on a daily basis, using PROC SQL to query against large Oracle databases, and using DATA steps, macros, merging, do loops, arrays, PROC PRINT (with or without ODS), PROC SORT, PROC SQL, PROC UNIVARIATE, if/then/else logic, and other SAS procedures in order to manipulate, summarize and structure the data for output.
  
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  Understands, reviews, and analyzes existing SAS programs in order to modify programs as needed to extract necessary data to perform the required analytical tasks.
  
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  Upon completion of developing SAS Programs, prepares the SAS program for automation through the use of SAS macros, Unix scripts and Autosys scheduling. Ensures automation procedures remain up-to-date on an ongoing basis, and are thoroughly documented in project-specific technical specification.
  
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  Conducts customized ad-hoc reporting and analyses of clinical data to meet the individual and changing needs of FMS Chief Medical Officer; Clinical and Scientific Affairs; Clinical Services; Operations Support; Operations Analysis; and other internal business customers. Clinical data reporting, analysis and interpretation will vary and is extremely customized to the needs of the customer. Analysis could include reporting of patient outcomes, monitoring of medication and laboratory utilization, and analysis and interpretation of other related data as needed.
  
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  Develops SAS programs on a daily basis and utilizes SAS to generate reports and conduct analytical tasks ranging from simple one-time queries of the clinical data warehouse (e.g., count patients with lab result values within a particular range) to extremely sophisticated production programs that involve a multitude of calculations and generated reports with custom formatted SAS ODS output on a scheduled basis.
  
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  Utilizes SAS/SQL programming to create data files to be submitted to pharmaceutical companies and/or end clients for research studies and data licensing agreements. Collaborates with Clinical Studies to determine appropriate patient, record and data type inclusion criteria according to customer’s needs and extracts data from the data warehouse accordingly. Evaluates data values to ensure within reason (mean, counts, range, etc.), and whether data cleaning is required. Develops detailed technical specification documents to accompany data extracts, to be used by the customer (i.e., users guide) as well as for internal reference.
  
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  Performs efficient querying against large Oracle databases through the use of proper SQL language, SQL pass-through in SAS, and leveraging off of table indexing.
  
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  Navigates within Unix environment performing basic Unix commands as part of disk space and file management. Writes basic Unix script files for running batch programs.
  
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  Generates summary statistics on data analyzing the content to identify and address data issues, anomalies, inconsistencies, outliers and limitations such as overlapping admissions, outlier lab values, apparent data entry errors in medication dose values, etc. that may greatly impact final results. Escalate issues to Management as needed.
  
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  Understands the content and proper usage of the Company’s clinical data warehouse (Oracle) being queried, without the existence of user documentation. This involves navigating the data to get a sense of typical ranges of values, seeking out examples of data use in existing SAS programs as reference, interpreting the data, taking notes, and asking organized questions.
  
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  Summarizes results of data analyses in written reports and oral presentations to Management, as required.
  
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  Maintains organized and well-documented SAS programs, SQL queries and other analysis-related documents.
  
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  Ensures clinical data integrity among various internal groups.
  
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  Learns and adapts to new software packages, analytical tools and database environments, as required.
  
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  Other duties as assigned.

PHYSICAL DEMANDS AND WORKING CONDITIONS:
The physical demands and work environment characteristics described here are representative of those an employee encounters while performing the essential functions of this job. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions.

EDUCATION:

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  Master’s Degree in epidemiology, public health, statistics, data analysis or equivalent background via combination of professional training classes and work experience.
  
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  SAS Global Certification strongly preferred.

EXPERIENCE AND REQUIRED SKILLS:

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  Minimum 5 years experience using SAS Base, STAT, Graph, Macro, ODS.
  
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  Minimum 2 years experience with SQL querying (within or outside of SAS) against databases. Oracle a plus.
  
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  Excellent verbal and written communication skills required for interacting with physicians, nurses, management personnel, and peers.
  
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  Ability to clearly summarize methodology and key points of program / report in technical documentation / specifications.
  
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  Ability to program independently without day-to-day supervision or the use of templates.
  
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  Fluency with advanced features of Microsoft Excel or other spreadsheet program required.
  
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  Experience with large databases preferred.
  
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  Experience with Unix-based file editing, file management and/or scripting a plus.
  
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  Ability to perform SQL querying against Oracle databases outside of SAS, in an application such as Toad or Toad for Data Analysts is also useful.
  
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  Knowledge of clinical data and dialysis industry preferred.
  
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  Working knowledge of Microsoft Access a plus.

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