Data Scientist, CAHPS Analytics & Star Ratings

E2E Alignment Healthcare USA, LLC; California; Hybrid; USD 150,000 - 225,000; Full time

Job summary

Alignment Health in California is seeking a mission‑driven Data Scientist focused on CAHPS to model survey response and satisfaction, identify drivers behind measure performance, and translate insights into targeted interventions that move Star Rating cut points.

You will partner with Stars, member experience, and operations, build pipelines and dashboards, collaborate with engineering on model deployment, and ensure outputs align with CMS guidance.

Qualifications

• PhD in Computer Science, Engineering, Mathematics, Statistics, or related field.
• Experience with CMS/NCQA CAHPS methodology, including case-mix adjustment, sampling and fielding cycles, and item response theory or other psychometric methods.
• Strong programming skills in Python, Java, R, Scala, or C++.
• Proficiency in SQL and relational databases.
• Experience with data visualization and presenting insights to non-technical stakeholders.
• Experience building end-to-end data science solutions with measurable outcomes.
• Solid data structures and algorithms background.
• Understanding of statistical measures such as confidence intervals, significance of error measurement, and development/evaluation data sets.

Responsibilities

• Collaborate with Stars, member experience, and operations leaders to understand CAHPS performance drivers and translate them into analytical solutions.
• Segment members by likelihood to respond to the CAHPS survey and by predicted satisfaction, to prioritize outreach and intervention.
• Build and fine‑tune models predicting member-level risk of low CAHPS domain scores, including Getting Needed Care, Getting Appointments and Care Quickly, Customer Service, Care Coordination, Rating of Health Care Quality, and Rating of Health Plan.
• Analyze item‑level CAHPS survey data, not just composite or domain scores, to isolate which specific survey questions are driving measure performance.
• Build pipelines that track CAHPS survey administration cycles — sampling, fielding, and response rates — and validate case‑mix adjustment logic against CMS/NCQA methodology.
• Model statistical significance and year‑over‑year variance to distinguish genuine performance shifts from survey noise or sampling error.
• Coordinate with CAHPS survey vendors on sampling methodology, fielding timelines, and case‑mix adjustment specifications.
• Collaborate with engineering teams to version, test, and deploy models using Git, CI/CD pipelines, and virtual machine (VM) environments.
• Partner with member experience, call center, provider network, Compliance, and Legal teams to ensure CAHPS‑related data outputs and interventions align with CMS guidance.
• Build dashboards tracking measure‑level CAHPS performance against Star Rating cut points and prior‑year trend for each domain.
• Help standardize definitions, documentation logic, and reporting workflows to scale CAHPS analytics enterprise‑wide.

Skills

CAHPS modelling

Predictive modelling

SQL

Python

Java

R

Scala

C++

Data visualization

Education

PhD in Computer Science, Engineering, Mathematics, Statistics, or related field

Tools

Git

CI/CD

VMs

Job description

Alignment Health in California is seeking a mission‑driven Data Scientist focused on CAHPS to model survey response and satisfaction, identify drivers behind measure performance, and translate insights into targeted interventions that move Star Rating cut points.

You will partner with Stars, member experience, and operations, build pipelines and dashboards, collaborate with engineering on model deployment, and ensure outputs align with CMS guidance.