Anyone work in a hospital's IT?

[cpals]

Thinking about applying for a job as a Network Administrator for a local hospital, but I've never been in the healthcare field. Supposedly my local hospital has great employee moral and satisfaction.

Anyone work at one before in the IT field?

 

[xSauronx]

im interning at a large area hospital that operates a network of hospitals and clinics in the eastern part of north carolina

/morale here is sometimes meh
//satisfaction comes with a paycheck and benefits

 

[cpals]

I haven't had a raise in three years and there is no room for growth where I am currently... raises are across the board so if I did get one and worked my butt off, it would be the same amount as Joe Schmoe who sleeps all day. Health benefits are very good and I get a take-home car so I would need something to equal or better those benefits.

 

[rudeguy]

everyone I know that works in the healthcare field is preparing for the worst if Obamacare is as bad as people are making it sound. With that being said, I don't know that many people who work in healthcare.

Is this a small hospital or large? Is it part of a larger network of hospitals?

 

[xSauronx]

where i work (and im told this, because as an intern, the only benefit i get is the cafeteria discount) that the insurance here is awesome. 80% coverage after your deductible, and the hospital gives a 50% discount on that last 20%.

a guy i know there has had some MRIs or something because he has back issues...his costs is a few hundred, instead of a few thousand dollars.

as for career advancement/pay raises: its based on an annual review. if your review is average, you get a minor raise, if its above average, you get a slightly larger one. there are annual bonuses as well, dont know much about those. the only people i know where i work that havnt advanced or gotten a raise are slackers, not bad people, but they let their skills stagnate and dont really do much but barely get their work done.

 

[cpals]

everyone I know that works in the healthcare field is preparing for the worst if Obamacare is as bad as people are making it sound. With that being said, I don't know that many people who work in healthcare.

Is this a small hospital or large? Is it part of a larger network of hospitals?

To me they seem large.. Largest in the county. Says they're a public not-for-profit hospital.

From their website:
Open since 1916, the hospital continues to be an award-winning health care system with more than a million patient contacts each year. Our success, however, begins with our greatest assets...our employees.

Our staff is routinely recognized for the compassionate and dedicated care they provide to their patients. More than 9,300 employees and 4,500 volunteers and Auxilians are part of the hospital family - the very heart of our health system

 

[preslove]

everyone I know that works in the healthcare field is preparing for the worst if Obamacare is as bad as people are making it sound. With that being said, I don't know that many people who work in healthcare.

Is this a small hospital or large? Is it part of a larger network of hospitals?

How does forcing the uninsured to buy health insurance hurt the healthcare field?

 

[SaDiZTiKStyLeZ]

I never see anything posted for IT at the area hospitals. I thought they just contracted that shit to an outside company.

 

[leeland]

I worked in one for two years...and it is a dead end job depending on your career in the department. I was an analyst which narrows you down to their specific computing system...

As others have said, the insurance benefits can be nice but the raises I got were across the board which blew if you were the hard worker of the group. More work for same pay as everyone else.

Would I go back...probably not...but I am in a different field of IT now so it might be worth it...

 

[theflyingpig]

You'll have to deal with all of the jaded, bitchy nurses. Them and the doctors who think they know everything about everything. Hospitals are the worst. Everyone knows this.

 

[rudeguy]

How does forcing the uninsured to buy health insurance hurt the healthcare field?

I won't turn this into an Obamacare thread. I was just stating what I did know and made sure to throw in that I don't know much.

 

[cpals]

Theflyingpig - it seems like all areas of work have that aspect... Where I work now does.

Colleges have the faculty, hospitals have the doctors, law enforcement have the officers, etc. Everyone thinks they're better than the lowly support personnel.

 

[cpals]

dp

 

[cpals]

Just talked with my friend who has family working at this hospital and they all like working there a lot... might pursue this more.

 

[shiner]

Yes. Have been here for 14 years. It has good and bad aspects just like anywhere else.

 

[cpals]

Yes. Have been here for 14 years. It has good and bad aspects just like anywhere else.

IT field? Care to elaborate?

 

[Mark R]

You'll have to deal with all of the jaded, bitchy nurses. Them and the doctors who think they know everything about everything. Hospitals are the worst. Everyone knows this.

True. However, a lot of the reason is that many healthcare apps are total disaster areas as regards usability. There are several user groups, which have begun turning into semi-political pressure groups, in order to try and steer the development of these systems. That pressure groups should form in response to the deployment of software packages suggests significant usability problems.

Not only that, but many have severe reliability problems and lack of availability. It's considered 'acceptable' to take down a health-critical system (X-ray archive) for 24 hours for 'routine maintenance' (during which time there is no access to old x-rays - and new x-rays can only be viewed 'live' on the capture machine) - and that's assuming the servers haven't crashed (which happens on a weekly basis).

Just a few tips from past experience as a user of these systems:
After I spent 3 hours configuring my software package with macros (to replace missing or broken functions), custom presets and scripts, and then having all those customizations lost, because I clicked the 'help' button which caused an 'unhandled exception'. I do not appreciate it when I'm laughed at by the helpdesk, and called an idiot for not saving my work (I did save my work, but the changes don't get committed until logout!).

After I identified a race condition in the software package that led to medical data being stored in the wrong patient's file, and identified the series of steps that reliably reproduces it. A reply of 'if that series of actions causes you problems, then don't use them. Why are you using that function anyway?' is not appropriate.

 

[Elbryn]

i've worked in a large university teaching hospital for the last 8 years through a pretty wide range of IT positions. What is it you want to know? you've kind of left it wide open with no real specific question.

-benefits? health insurance is great. i pay about 200 bucks a month pretax to cover my entire family with the cadillac coverage. 100% coverage on most things, flat rate charge for hospitalizations, 80% coverage on everything not covered in the two prior statements.
-technically considered a state employee and dont pay social security but send money to the pension system which in itself is a nice benefit.
-from a feel good standpoint- when i was a clinical department sysman, there was quite a bit of satisfaction. mostly because the systems i dealt with provided direct care to people that i could see direct results on. less so in my current role which is much farther insulated on the IT side.
-There's quite a range of IT fields within hospitals now a days so you do have places to potentially grow to if the place is big enough.
-I will say that vendor apps can suck donkey balls but that's life everywhere. vendors have more power here. most clinical apps have to be fda approved which lets vendors dictate explicitly what you buy and charge you ridiculous prices for things.
-being a university hospital, i get quite a bit of tuition benefits. i got an mba for about 10% of the total cost. if i'm still here when my kids go to college, they'll get 50% off tuition here.
-relaxed working conditions. there isnt as much pressure as in the outside world. many folks here "work thier hours" and go home.
-if you have something specific, pm me. i'll try to look back at the thread but might not remember

 

[akenbennu]

I was working in hospital IT about 10-12 years ago as a contractor. Enjoyed it quite a bit, but be prepared to work with some outdated equipment/software. Lots of apps that required DOS/Win 3.1 at the time and/or mainframe systems. It wouldn't surprise me if they still had 2000/XP as their main OS and wouldn't be looking to upgrade. Expect to spent a lot of time puting out fires.

 

[vi edit]

I'm hospital IT as well. I'm more in the clinical apps side than a full blown, traditional IT role. I support our imaging systems and a couple other enterprise apps that support radiology.

As others have said, depending on how big your hospital/system is there are a number of job opportunities. We have over 400 IT staff that cover dozens of areas. You have your traditional IT jobs like network admins, help desk, server admins. And then you have the clinical app side that builds and supports the clinical applications like the HIS/RIS/PACS/LAB/EMER/ect. And then you have project managers, report writers, programmers, blackbelts, BSA's, ect. Lots of opportunities.

I will say that with many systems it's very hard to get "in" unless you know someone or have a very specific skill set that they are looking for. But once you are in, you are there for as long as you like. We have very, very low turnover. But part of that is just do to our local economy and not having many other similar sized employers that have similar jobs/salary/benefits.

It can be a pretty cool job that will offer you some highly specialized skills that other employers can't. With the PACS admin and HIS/RIS/HL7 knowledge I have I can find pretty well paying employment in almost any decent sized city with a large hospital. It's just a skillset that not many other people have.

Right now if you can build in some of the big name HIS systems then you can almost name your price as a consultant. Huge demand for these people.

Downsides is that it can be a pretty inbred employer. Lots of former clinical people (nurses mostly) come over to be application builders/support. Which is good an bad. Good in that they really know the users and the workflows, but bad in that they have huge gaps in the world of IT. Same thing with MD's. You'll quickly learn that the hospitals will pretty much coddle them and escalate even the most trivial thing "because it affects a doctor". Most of them are pretty cool guys, but there's enough of the "I refuse to learn this/I don't have time to learn this/I *AM* doing it right even though I'm really not" types out there to keep you frustrated.

Overall I'm happy. I can't think of a day in the last 5 years that I woke up and said "I really don't want to go to work today". I can't say that for previous jobs I've had.

 

[Elbryn]

I'm hospital IT as well. I'm more in the clinical apps side than a full blown, traditional IT role. I support our imaging systems and a couple other enterprise apps that support radiology.

do your radiologists complain about every pacs upgrade there is that might affect the number of mouse clicks it takes to view an image? then calculate the extra number of clicks they might do in a year and then calculate how much it's costing them per year to click one extra time per study?

 

[xSauronx]

True. However, a lot of the reason is that many healthcare apps are total disaster areas as regards usability. There are several user groups, which have begun turning into semi-political pressure groups, in order to try and steer the development of these systems. That pressure groups should form in response to the deployment of software packages suggests significant usability problems.

Not only that, but many have severe reliability problems and lack of availability. It's considered 'acceptable' to take down a health-critical system (X-ray archive) for 24 hours for 'routine maintenance' (during which time there is no access to old x-rays - and new x-rays can only be viewed 'live' on the capture machine) - and that's assuming the servers haven't crashed (which happens on a weekly basis).

Just a few tips from past experience as a user of these systems:
After I spent 3 hours configuring my software package with macros (to replace missing or broken functions), custom presets and scripts, and then having all those customizations lost, because I clicked the 'help' button which caused an 'unhandled exception'. I do not appreciate it when I'm laughed at by the helpdesk, and called an idiot for not saving my work (I did save my work, but the changes don't get committed until logout!).

After I identified a race condition in the software package that led to medical data being stored in the wrong patient's file, and identified the series of steps that reliably reproduces it. A reply of 'if that series of actions causes you problems, then don't use them. Why are you using that function anyway?' is not appropriate.

You sound like the IT department there is full of assholes and hellions.

We've had some issues losing user data during upgrades...data that they didnt say they needed, but knew was critical to their work, and had never backed up. Some people get really pissed...and we try to help them, but if they dont tell us what they need (after we ask) and dont have it backed up already, I just really cant be bothered to care.

However, we *do* try to help users pretty good when we can. In fact, if youre in IT here and you need a hand from someone in IT, its hard to get to the top of their list. If youre a user, department manager or a critical piece of equipment then youre the priority. It makes collaboration or IT projects a pain in the ass half the time, but the user support is generally pretty good.

The worst thing for hospital IT, at least where I work, is legacy apps. We *just* got everyone upgraded over the last 2 years (ive been here 6 months) to windows XP, and now were going to Office 2003. IE7 is getting pushed to workstations as of 2 weeks ago but isnt being auto-installed because the workstation cycle there lasts about 8 years and people will freak out when their computer gets even slower. That...or theyd cancel the process if you dont run it in the background.

I *hate* dealing with old software and hope to get a position on the network team soon. Application support is driving me nuts.

 

[vi edit]

do your radiologists complain about every pacs upgrade there is that might affect the number of mouse clicks it takes to view an image? then calculate the extra number of clicks they might do in a year and then calculate how much it's costing them per year to click one extra time per study?

Oh jesus. Radiologists are the worst. These guys are freaking princesses. They sit squirreled away in some dark cushy office with $40,000 in workstations and diagnostic monitors in a $90,000 ergonomic desk & chair with more office amenities than a freaking Vegas penthouse suite and then bitch about the tiniest little thing that happens. Cardiolgists are next worst. But still can't hold a candle to the Rads.

 

[vi edit]

And yep...outdated software sucks here too. We're still on IE6 as the corporate standard because several applications still can't work on anything else. Until those are phased out (sometime next year) we'll still webbrowse like it's 2001.

 

[Gooberlx2]

I'm hospital IT as well. I'm more in the clinical apps side than a full blown, traditional IT role. I support our imaging systems and a couple other enterprise apps that support radiology.

I'm a sysadmin for an imaging research and analysis lab and much of my work involves managing millions upon millions of DICOM files directly, but largely outside of a PACS environment. I really should start learning more about PACS/RIS systems and administration. Is there any kind of class or workshop you can suggest?