Healthcare Research Analytics Internship

Overview of the Joint Commission Research Center

The Joint Commission is a global leader in quality improvement and patient safety within healthcare, primarily through its role as a nonprofit accrediting and certification organization for healthcare organizations across the US and globally. To further its mission, the organization has established a Research Center dedicated to studying the impact of accreditation and certification on healthcare outcomes, translating evidence into actionable insights. This center conducts both retrospective and prospective analyses to understand how accreditation and certification influence critical outcomes such as patient safety, mortality, and organizational change.

The Joint Commission Research Center is actively seeking a highly skilled and motivated summer intern to bolster its expanding portfolio of research initiatives. This role directly informs healthcare quality improvement, accreditation strategy, certification programs, and system-level learning. Working closely with the Director of Health Research Services, Research Scientists, and Senior Healthcare Data Analysts, the intern will be instrumental in preparing and analyzing complex healthcare datasets. They will also contribute to the preparation of manuscripts for peer-reviewed journals, technical memos, and other essential materials for both internal and external stakeholders. This is a hands-on role demanding technical rigor, independent execution, and a strong commitment to the organization's mission.

This 8-12 week internship aims to support the data analytics work of the Research Center, which comprises three core components: (1) data documentation, (2) data processing, and (3) data analysis. Furthermore, the internship is designed to provide invaluable data analytics experience in the specialized fields of healthcare and health services research. The ideal candidate will be exposed to diverse patient- and hospital-level healthcare data, as well as every stage of the data analytics lifecycle, enabling them to contribute meaningfully to ongoing projects while simultaneously mastering best practices in data management and governance.

Key Responsibilities for a Healthcare Research Analytics Intern

• Collaborate with Senior Healthcare Data Analysts, Research Scientists, and the Director of Health Services Research to support data analytics workflows.
• Prepare, clean, merge, and manage complex healthcare datasets from various sources, including patient-level electronic health record (EHR) data, accreditation and certification records, and administrative claims (e.g., Medicare, Medicaid), utilizing programming languages such as R, Python, and Stata.
• Extract and manipulate data from relational databases efficiently using SQL and/or other available tools.
• Conduct statistical analyses with established and novel methods under the guidance of research leadership, ensuring reproducible and well-documented analytic workflows.
• Leverage statistical programming languages (e.g., R, Python, Stata) to generate summary statistics, data visualizations, and model estimates for use in research studies, internal strategy documents, policy briefs, and peer-reviewed publications.
• Implement quasi-experimental research designs and machine learning methods, including associated data pre-processing, hyperparameter tuning, model evaluation, and assumption testing.
• Maintain comprehensive documentation of data sources, definitions, programming steps, and quality checks to ensure transparency and reproducibility of all analyses.
• Contribute to the preparation of manuscripts for peer-reviewed journals, technical memos, data briefs, and presentation materials for internal decision-making and external dissemination.

Qualifications We Are Looking For

Required Qualifications:

• Bachelor’s degree in a discipline with substantial quantitative components.
• Currently enrolled in a quantitative Master’s degree program (e.g., Biostatistics, Data Science, Economics, Epidemiology, Public Policy, Health Policy, Statistics).
• Demonstrated experience with R and/or Python programming languages for data processing, analysis, and visualization.
• Proficiency in querying and manipulating data using SQL.
• Proven ability to communicate and collaborate effectively with multidisciplinary stakeholders in a team environment.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Prior experience analyzing patient- and/or hospital-level healthcare data.
• Experience supporting research involving quasi-experimental designs (e.g., difference-in-differences, instrumental variables) and machine learning techniques.
• Track record of contributing to or co-authoring peer-reviewed journal publications.
• Skill in translating complex analytic findings for non-technical stakeholders.
• Previous work experience within a mission-driven organization or a collaborative research environment.

Note: Currently enrolled undergraduate students who demonstrate substantial relevant experience may also be considered.

Key skills/competency

• Data Analytics
• Statistical Analysis
• R Programming
• Python Programming
• SQL
• Healthcare Data
• Quasi-Experimental Design
• Machine Learning
• Data Documentation
• Data Visualization