8 Option Care Health SQL Interview Questions (Updated 2024)

At Option Care Health, SQL does the heavy lifting for analyzing complex healthcare datasets for insights into patient care trends and managing large, dynamic databases for real-time patient data accessibility. So, it shouldn't surprise you that Option Care Health almost always evaluates jobseekers on SQL problems in interviews for Data Analyst, Data Science, and BI jobs.

So, to help you prepare for the Option Care Health SQL interview, we've curated 8 Option Care Health SQL interview questions in this blog.

8 Option Care Health SQL Interview Questions

SQL Question 1: Identify Top Healthcare Service Users

Option Care Health is a leading provider of home infusion services and home healthcare services. As a data analyst, identify the top 10 "VIP" patients based on the frequency of healthcare services used and amount of spending in the last 6 months. Assume we have a patient database and a transaction database.

patients Example Input:

transactions Example Input:

Answer:

SELECT p.patient_id, p.first_name, p.last_name, COUNT(t.transaction_id) as frequency, SUM(t.amount) as total_spending
FROM patients p
JOIN transactions t ON p.patient_id = t.patient_id
WHERE t.transaction_date >= NOW() - INTERVAL '6 months'
GROUP BY p.patient_id, p.first_name, p.last_name
ORDER By total_spending DESC, frequency DESC
LIMIT 10;

This query joins the patients and transactions tables on the patient_id field. It then filters the transactions to the last 6 months. The GROUP BY clause is used to aggregate the data by each patient. The ORDER BY clause sorts the patients by total spending in descending order, and then by frequency in descending order to get the top 10 VIP patients.

To solve a related customer analytics question on DataLemur's free online SQL code editor, try this recently asked Microsoft SQL interview question:

Discover how Option Care Health is harnessing the power of Palantir's artificial intelligence to enhance patient care and streamline operations! Understanding their innovative approach can provide you with a deeper insight into how healthcare companies are evolving in today's tech-driven world.

SQL Question 2: Second Highest Salary

Given a table of Option Care Health employee salaries, write a SQL query to find the 2nd highest salary among all employees.

Option Care Health employees Example Input:

Example Output:

Try this question and run your code right in the browser:

Answer:

SELECT MAX(salary) AS second_highest_salary
FROM employee
WHERE salary < (
    SELECT MAX(salary)
    FROM employee
);

You can find a step-by-step solution with hints here: 2nd Highest Salary.

SQL Question 3: What do stored procedures do?

Stored procedures are a lot like functions in programming. They're used to encapsulate and organize business logic into one unit of code, and they can accept multiple input parameters and return multiple output values.

For example, if you were a Data Analyst at Option Care Health working on a HR analytics project, you might create a stored procedure to calculate the average salary for a given department:

CREATE FUNCTION get_avg_salary(department_name TEXT)
RETURNS NUMERIC AS
$BODY$
BEGIN
  RETURN (SELECT AVG(salary) FROM option_care_health_employees WHERE department = department_name);
END;
$BODY$
LANGUAGE 'plpgsql';

To call this stored procedure and find the average salary for the Data Analytics department you'd write the following query:

SELECT get_avg_salary('Data Analytics');

SQL Question 4: Calculate Average of Monthly Injections per Pharmacy

Option Care Health is a home infusion services provider. Let's assume that the company wants to analyze its data on injections administered per pharmacy on a monthly basis. The task is to write a SQL query to calculate the average number of injections per pharmacy each month.

Here are the sample tables:

pharmacy_injections Example Input:

Example Output:

Answer:

Here's a PostgreSQL query to calculate the average number of injections per pharmacy each month:

SELECT EXTRACT(MONTH FROM date_administered) as month, 
       EXTRACT(YEAR FROM date_administered) as year, 
       pharmacy_id, 
       COUNT(*) / COUNT(DISTINCT patient_id) as avg_injections
FROM pharmacy_injections
GROUP BY year,
         month,
         pharmacy_id
ORDER BY year,
         month,
         avg_injections DESC;

This query first extracts the month and year from the date_administered column, then groups the data by year, month and pharmacy_id. It calculates the count of injections divided by the count of distinct patients to find the average number of injections administered per pharmacy each month. The results are sorted by year, month, and average injections in descending order.

Pro Tip: Window functions are a frequent SQL interview topic, so practice every window function problem on DataLemur

SQL Question 5: What's the purpose of the FOREIGN KEY constraint?

A FOREIGN KEY is a field in a table that references the PRIMARY KEY of another table. It creates a link between the two tables and ensures that the data in the FOREIGN KEY field is valid.

For example, if you have a table of Option Care Health customers and an orders table, the customer_id column in the orders table could be a FOREIGN KEY that references the id column (which is the primary key) in the Option Care Health customers table.

The FOREIGN KEY constraint helps maintain the integrity of the data in the database by preventing the insertion of rows in the FOREIGN KEY table that do not have corresponding entries in the PRIMARY KEY table. It also enforces the relationship between the two tables and prevents data from being deleted from the PRIMARY KEY table if it is still being referenced in the FOREIGN KEY table.

SQL Question 6: Patient Prescription Behavior

Option Care Health is trying to analyze the prescription behavior of its patients and their adherence to the prescribed medication over time. With a SQL data structure consisting of two tables: patients and prescriptions, they want to determine which drug has been prescribed the most and monitor whether there are any changes based on gender or age.

Patients table stores their basic information, and Prescriptions table contains information on all patients' prescription data.

Patients Example Input:

Prescriptions Example Input:

Write a PostgreSQL query to find the most prescribed drug and check the distribution by gender and age.

Answer:

SELECT drug, COUNT(*) AS count, 
    (SELECT COUNT(*) FROM Patients
    WHERE gender = 'M' AND patient_id IN
        (SELECT patient_id FROM Prescriptions WHERE drug = P.drug)) AS male_count,
    (SELECT COUNT(*) FROM Patients
    WHERE gender = 'F' AND patient_id IN
        (SELECT patient_id FROM Prescriptions WHERE drug = P.drug)) AS female_count,
    (SELECT AVG(age) FROM Patients
    WHERE patient_id IN
        (SELECT patient_id FROM Prescriptions WHERE drug = P.drug)) AS average_age
FROM Prescriptions P
GROUP BY drug
ORDER BY count DESC
LIMIT 1;

With the PostgreSQL query, we are counting the total number of prescription occurrences for each drug and also categorizing them by gender. At the same time, we calculate the average age of the patients being prescribed each drug. The result is ordered by prescription count in descending order only showing the most prescribed drug. This analysis helps us understand which medications are the most popular among patients and how age and gender are factors.

SQL Question 7: How do the 'BETWEEN' and 'IN' commands differ?

BETWEEN is used to select rows that match a range of values, whereas the IN operator checks for values in a specified list of values.

For example, say you were a Data Analyst at Option Care Health and had a table of advertising campaign data.

To find campaigns with between $500 and$10k in spend, you could use BETWEEN:

SELECT * 
FROM  option_care_health_ad_campaigns
WHERE spend BETWEEN 500 AND 10000;

To find ad campaigns that were run on Facebook and Google's Display Network, you could use IN:

SELECT * 
FROM option_care_health_ad_campaigns
WHERE ad_platform IN ("fb", "google_display");

SQL Question 8: Search for Patients With Certain Conditions

You are given a database of the patients of Option Care Health. Write an SQL query that filters the database to find all records where the condition column contain the term 'diabetes' (regardless of case sensitivity).

The patients table is structured as follows:

patients Example Input:

Given this input, your output should look similar to this:

Example Output:

Answer:

    SELECT * 
    FROM patients
    WHERE LOWER(condition) LIKE '%diabetes%';

The PostgreSQL query uses the LIKE keyword to match text values against a pattern using wildcards. Here, the '%' is a wildcard character that matches zero or more characters. The LOWER(condition) function converts the condition to lower case before checking with the LIKE keyword, ensuring the case-insensitive match to 'diabetes'. This query will return all records in the patients table where the condition contains the term 'diabetes'.

Preparing For The Option Care Health SQL Interview

The best way to prepare for a SQL interview, besides making sure you have strong SQL fundamentals, is to practice a ton of real SQL questions that were asked in recent job interviews. In addition to solving the above Option Care Health SQL interview questions, you should also solve the 200+ DataLemur SQL Interview Questions which come from companies like Google, Uber, and Microsoft.

Each interview question has hints to guide you, step-by-step solutions and most importantly, there's an online SQL coding environment so you can instantly run your SQL query and have it executed.

To prep for the Option Care Health SQL interview it is also a great idea to solve SQL questions from other healthcare and pharmaceutical companies like:

• Charles River SQL questions
• Align Technology SQL questions
• AMN Healthcare SQL questions
• Catalent SQL questions

But if your SQL query skills are weak, don't worry about going right into solving questions – refresh your SQL knowledge with this DataLemur SQL tutorial.

This tutorial covers SQL concepts such as manipulating date/time data and creating summary stats with GROUP BY – both of which pop up routinely in SQL interviews at Option Care Health.

Option Care Health Data Science Interview Tips

What Do Option Care Health Data Science Interviews Cover?

In addition to SQL interview questions, the other types of problems to prepare for the Option Care Health Data Science Interview include:

• Probability & Stats Questions
• Coding Questions in Python or R
• Product Data Science Interview Questions
• ML Interview Questions
• Behavioral Questions focussed on Option Care Health company values

How To Prepare for Option Care Health Data Science Interviews?

To prepare for Option Care Health Data Science interviews read the book Ace the Data Science Interview because it's got:

• 201 interview questions taken from companies like Microsoft, Google & Amazon
• a crash course covering SQL, Product-Sense & ML
• over 1000+ reviews on Amazon & 4.5-star rating

Also focus on the behavioral interview – prepare for that with this list of common Data Scientist behavioral interview questions.