"RN - Clinical Research Informatics Specialist"

A cover letter is required for consideration for this position and should be attached as the first page of your resume. The cover letter should address your specific interest in the position and outline skills and experience that directly relate to this position.

Are you an experienced nurse with a passion for improving care through research and quality improvement? If you thrive in a fast-paced, highly innovative environment, the Multicenter Perioperative Outcomes Group (MPOG) is seeking a Clinical Informatics Specialist with direct clinical experience and a strong background in informatics.

About MPOG

The Multicenter Perioperative Outcomes Group (MPOG) is a consortium of more than 60 health systems participating representing over 150 hospitals from across the United States. MPOG is run by faculty and staff at the University of Michigan Department of Anesthesiology and is part of the Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigans Collaborative Quality Initiatives (CQI) program. MPOGs registry aggregates electronic health record (EHR) data to investigate variations in care and develop strategies to improve care delivery. Since its inception in 2008, the consortium has developed policies, procedures, and the technical infrastructure required to conduct multicenter research projects, lead quality improvement initiatives, educate caregivers, and guide healthcare administration. The MPOG team includes clinicians, quality improvement experts, software developers, statisticians, and administrators. For more information, please visit https://mpog.org/about/

Position Summary

The Clinical Informatics Specialist will play a key role in supporting clinical trials and research initiatives by developing and validating phenotypes, onboarding sites, and overall, ensuring the quality and accuracy of EHR-derived clinical data within the MPOG registry. MPOG utilizes computed phenotypes to identify cases for inclusion in research or quality improvement initiatives. Phenotypes are coded building blocks or algorithms used to sort and organize large data sets. The Clinical Informatics Specialist is responsible for specifying new and existing phenotypes and validating the output is accurate based on clinical review. As additional data types are added to the MPOG registry, the Clinical Informatics Specialist provides direction for how data should be mapped, defined, stored, and organized to facilitate future analysis. This role will evaluate the current infrastructure of the MPOG registry and work closely with MPOG programmers, physicians, nurses, and statisticians to modify prioritize future application development. The Clinical Informatics Specialist must apply their expertise in the areas of clinical practice, research, and information systems to develop cohesive solutions that organizes data captured from the electronic health record to facilitate research projects.

In addition to analytic skills, this role requires experience in understanding perioperative clinical workflow and documentation patterns. The Clinical Informatics Specialist will need to work with participating MPOG sites to refine mapping of clinical variables and understand possible trends in documentation that could impact how registry data is used. Additionally, this role will involve onboarding new sites, educating them on the MPOG Platform, and guiding their technical and clinical teams through the steps to join MPOG.

Supervision Received

Administrative supervision from MPOG Clinical Program Manager, functional supervision from MPOG Associate Research Director

Clinical Trial & Research Support

• Collaborate with investigators and research coordinators to ensure trial-relevant data elements are accurately captured, validated, and represented in the MPOG registry.
• Identify and implement phenotype definitions to support inclusion/exclusion criteria, outcome measures, and data abstraction processes for research protocols.
• Participate in protocol feasibility reviews and study design discussions with clinical and research teams.
• Review and understand existing data available in the MPOG registry.
• Identify gaps in the current registry and create a plan to gather and clean data from a variety of sources (electronic health record, administrative, anesthesia information management systems) to facilitate research projects.
• Perform end-user workflow analysis to ensure clinical data is captured accurately and uploaded to the clinical registry.
• Document and facilitate updates to correct variable mapping of perioperative data elements from the electronic health record.
• Proactively monitor documentation system changes and determine impact on data extracted and uploaded to the MPOG database.
• Build relationships with programmers and clinicians to identify what data needs exist.
• Effectively communicate and present resource needs to MPOG Clinical Program Manager and Directors to ensure success of clinical trials and research projects.
• Serve as primary resource within MPOG for site data issues and phenotypes. Assist team members in understanding documentation practices surrounding clinical care to interpret results of database queries.
• Translate SQL code for phenotypes into specifications easily interpreted by researchers and clinicians.
• Create and maintain internal and external support and training documentation for system design and workflow.

Software Design & Testing:

• Identify and test design enhancements for MPOG applications to improve the end-user experience.

Customer Service & Education:

• Identify operational inefficiencies and recommend and/or implement improvements to maintain data quality standards and customer satisfaction.
• Build relationships and serve as a primary point of contact for MPOG sites to address questions related to registry data requirements, clinical content mapping, and the onboarding process.
• Provide end-user support, education, and troubleshooting for MPOG applications.
• Work with participating sites to deploy and configure MPOG tools in support of trial operations.

Required Qualifications

• Clinical degree and experience required (e.g., RN, CRNA, MD, PA, or equivalent). Must have worked in a perioperative or acute care clinical setting.
• A Masters degree in Nursing, Health Informatics, Public Health or related field
• Five or more years of hands-on experience analyzing clinical or registry data
• Experience in specifying and validating clinical phenotypes for a perioperative data registry.
• Demonstrated project management skills in a healthcare setting
• Proficient in data analysis tools (Microsoft Excel, Tableau, Power BI, or another interactive data visualization platform)
• Proven ability to translate clinical data into clear, actionable insights for audiences ranging from frontline staff to senior leadership.
• Experience validating and analyzing clinical data using an electronic health record
• Demonstrated customer focus with the knowledge and skill to identify, meet, and evaluate customer expectations.
• Lead meetings and manage several projects simultaneously
• Ability to work independently in a fast-paced environment while owning multiple deliverables and consistently completing projects on or ahead of schedule with minimal managerial guidance
• High level of integrity as demonstrated by 1) ability to maintain confidentiality as appropriate, 2) adherence to policies, procedures, rules, and regulations, 3) professional behavior in workplace interactions/relationships, and 4) strong work ethic, resourceful, with passion to pursue excellence in all assignments completed

Desired Qualifications

• Proficiency in Epic and/or Cerner documentation systems
• Experience accessing Microsoft SQL Server and reviewing SQL code
• Advanced Microsoft 365 skills including Teams, Excel, Word, and PowerPoint
• Exceptional written and verbal communicator who uses diverse tools to distill complex analytic findings into clear reports and presentations for staff and leadership
• General understanding of ICD-10 and CPT code set
• Detail-oriented with strong passion for data accuracy.
• Exceptional analytical ability to translate external site or registry requests into clear query specifications for programmers, continually validating that the criteria will achieve the intended outcomes and generate data-driven recommendations

Mobile/Remote (Primarily remote - coming into the office as needed) 20hrs per week.