A Day in the Life of a Healthcare Data Analyst — What’s it Really Like?
A realistic description of job role and responsibilities in 2022
If you’re searching the internet to read a realistic job description of what data analysts do in their day, this is the perfect place to have landed.
Hi, I am Rashi, a Data Analyst at Blue Cross Blue Shield based out of Chicago, and this blog is all about what I do as an analyst day-to-day — skills used (and developed), tools, quintessential soft skills (including PowerPoint), and lessons learned in the past seven months of my job.
In the rapidly expanding technological world of today, this is the decade of data. Businesses project the year to be a breakout for how marketers use the data generated. For analytics strategy to align with business strategy, businesses have established a narrative to increase dependence on data evidence, and simply having access to numerous data lakes within an organization won’t be sufficient.
But before that, to add a little context…
My background in Data & Analytics
As an Electronics and Communication engineering student, the major didn’t stick with me. I kept reading about the possibilities in the world of technology and back in 2017, I was first introduced to the world of data and data science. Very novice to the field, I carved out a path to self-teaching Data Science. I picked up Python courses, practiced coding, workshops and forayed into Data Science with the IBM Data Science Professional Certification.
By the time I completed my capstone, I had admits from schools in the United States for Masters in Management Information Systems. I started my program in 2019 with a goal of learning data & analytics with sharp business acumen. While I was taking Finance and Accounting classes, I also had Data Mining, Statistics, and Cybersecurity classes.
I interned with PepsiCo for almost a year as a Data Analytics intern working on pipeline projects, did multiple independent projects, worked on a research paper and the student life ended with a full-time job in healthcare (a field I am extremely passionate about).
My definition of a Data Analyst
Businesses have problems.
Businesses have data.
A data analyst is a storyteller that creates and narrates a plot to the business.
A data analyst plays a pivotal role for a company to improve their products and business by collecting, mining, processing, performing data analysis, and communicating the insights to the executives in a palatable format.
It’s like solving a 1000-piece puzzle every day. You know the larger problem to be solved, you need to arrange the pieces seemingly well.
A Typical Day of Work in my Life
Apart from making sure I reach the HQ at 8:30 AM with a cup of coffee to take those lunch breaks and having conversations with peers about their weekend plans, my workday to earn that paycheck consists of—
- Daily stand-ups with my team to discuss the tasks of the day and brainstorm for possible solutions
- Meetings with cross-functional teams to discuss the progress, identify risks, cater to data-related requests
> Job Responsibilities
- Collect, integrate and analyze data from sources related to claims, internal business processes, and other domains
- Produce datasets and reports for analysis to support strategic needs
- Create dashboards, reports, insights, analytics in support of the business
- Continuously gain a deeper understanding of the business data to meet business requirements
- Interface with cross-functional teams to leverage tools and help build an analysis that is actionable within the business environment
- Assume project leadership responsibilities while working with management & business stakeholders to set and adhere to a project plan
> Skills Required (Technical and soft)
- Data collection(identifying the right data source for the problem)
- Data querying, cleaning, mining, and gathering requirements
- Predictive modeling, feature engineering (selecting the right variables)
- Statistics and basic math
- Communication (storytelling)
- Team building
- Adapting for the future (cannot stress enough how important it is to reinvent as a data professional in the job)
There are no deep learning, neural network, or complex machine learning models in the job — it’s a data analyst job profile, not a data scientist.
> Tools I Use
- Data Querying: SQL Server, Teradata
- ETL: Alteryx
- Data Analysis: Python
- Data Visualization: Tableau, PowerBI for small data
- Office 365 tools: Microsoft Excel (macros, pivot tables, vlookup are staples, PowerPoint)
Each business has its preferences for the tools and while my work involves the majority of data analytics tools, there are some tools internal to the business I have not noted here.
Lessons Learned as a Data Analyst
The present and future is data. And as a data analyst, after you cut all that (made-up-in-your-mind) competition to secure a job, the journey only begins.
- Establish familiarity with the business and develop acumen
- Equip with the business language as early as you start and keep building
- Explore how to approach new data analytics requirements and projects
- Always, always make a network of peers outside your team
- Develop accountable leadership — your behavior in times of responsibility is what makes you worthy of recognition
That’s it from my end for this blog. Thank you for reading! Let me know in the comments what has been your journey in data and what are looking for in 2022!
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Happy Data Tenting!
Rashi is a data wiz from Chicago who loves to visualize data and create insightful stories to communicate business insights. She’s a full-time healthcare data analyst and blogs about data on weekends with a good cup of hot chocolate…
