Healthcare IT Consulting HQ

I spend a lot of time on the road, this is either driving directly to the client or flying in on Sundays and leaving Thursdays.  Unlike other consultants, I am always checking a bag when I hit the airport.  Why do I want to lug my baggage around the airport?  I over two years I have yet to lost my baggage, and if it does not arrive at the same time as me, the airlines deliver the bag directly to the hotel I am checked in to.  Unfortunately there is a side effect to my traveling with baggage.

A Mess of Shampoo

Against the recommendations of other consultants saying to pack the bare essentials, I pack as much as I can in my suitcase as long as it is less than 50 lbs.  If you exclude all of the clothes I travel with I bring the following.

• Shampoo (20 oz)
• Conditioner (20 oz)
• Body Wash  (20 oz)
• Razor
• Travel Scale (1.5 lbs and can weigh someone up to 300 lbs)
• Mouth Wash (16-24 oz container)
• Toothpaste
• Toothbrush
• Floss

In the Boy Scouts, I learned to be prepared.  I do not see a reason to not bring everything I possible can in my checked luggage, as buying travel sizes of all these items can become very costly. You can siphon a majority of these items into travel containers, but what happens if you forget one weekend?  You may be different but I prefer to keep it all in my bag and then not have to unpack anything except clothing every weekend.

The downside though, is sometimes your bag will be crushed while traveling though the airport or airline throwers throw your bag a little too hard.  Suddenly your travel bag is filled with shampoo, conditioner, or body wash.  Some people will find this unacceptable and will just not travel with large bottles of bathroom supplies. I found a better solution as have stopped having this problem all together for under $2.00.

This Solution Is Good Enough For Airplanes

Well at least I’m told duct tape is used to hold airplane wings in place.  I hope that is not true, but if it is then more power to them.  No you do not have to buy incredibly wide duct tape.  I’m more of a small electric tape kind of guy.  You can pull a small amount off and rip the tape easily without a knife.  The weight is also negligible and can be thrown in your carry on or directly in your toiletries bag.

Once you have a roll of utility tape, pull out all of your liquid toiletries that can potentially leak out of the bottle during transit.  Just pull off a small amount of tape and run it across the lid where the bottle opens.  You now have a solid seal and your shampoo is not going to leak all over your clothes and toothbrush.

In summary, I found utility tape to really be my best friend when traveling.  You can also use it for tons of other small repairs while on the road.  Check this out for other uses of electric tape.  If you have a better solution for this problem, please let me know in the comments below.

Also if you are interested in starting a career in consulting, you can email me directly at healthcareitconsulting@yahoo.com I would love to chat or look over your resume.

An inevitable part of a career into consulting involves additional interviews.  You will be submitted to multiple hospitals, clinics, and Epic hiring managers.  While it seems scary, the whole process is intended just to get you on the phone for an interview.  Of course I have also been at a client where they wanted to hire an additional consultant, instead of calling each of them separately the PMO simply dropped a stack of resumes on my desk and asked which one sounded the best. No interview, they were just brought in.  The resume is just important in this scenario as well.

Take Stock of Your Skills

While obvious, I always end up with writers block when I start writing or updating my resume.  So instead of listing employers, I begin with a full list of my skills.  You best friend here is either a pencil and paper or a word processing system.  Since you probably refer to this for the rest of your professional career, you can also maintain this list in a cloud or easily accessible program like Dropbox or Evernote.

So with your pad of paper out, just start listing every skill you can think of.  Not just ones that are Epic consulting related.  The thing to remember is that if your Epic Resolute Professional Billing resume was being compared with another Epic PB consultant, what exactly are the differences between you?  You both can create workqueues, rules, and created new EAF records.  Do you submit a smiling picture of yourself along with your resume?  No soft skills are what will separate you from another candidate.

So take stock of everything you know.  Did you study Java in college?  Maybe the client is needing someone to actually help the team lead with their project management skills but they did not include it in the job description.  You might not be a report writer, but you can still be a whiz at Excel.  Take stock of all these items.

List of Professional Clients and Experiences

Similar to your list of soft skills, for every health system you have worked, list every project you performed.  If you were to build a Project List Resume, it would be similar to this process.  For every client, in chronological order, create a full list of projects you worked on.  Similar to this:

• Created new department for Durable Medical Equipment office
• Implemented collections process for entire professional billing health system
• Updated charge review workqueues based on new organizational structure
• Worked with several Epic teams to install Global Billing Package

For each client, you need to maintain a list like this.  Your job in this step is not to try and fit everything on to one or two pages.  Create a full list of every project worked through and keep it separate from your resume.

Power Trick For Project Lists

More than likely, you will not be able to remember every single project for every single project you have been a member.  Remember how I mentioned Evernote? As you are working with your clients or even in your current Epic Application Coordinator job, keep a separate list.  Use Evernote to maintain your list, then you can also just pull it out for your resume.

Another tool I really like is Microsoft OneNote.  This works like a document management system where you can maintain lists, projects, videos, and screenshots of builds and Epic implementations you are working through.   While working on your project list, you can peruse your projects and pull them into your resume.

Largely a Numbers Game

As an Epic consultant, the PMO receiving your resume is concerned largely about their return on investment.  You can say some of your projects were effective, but how do you prove this?  Probably the same you way you proved it to your client.  You didn’t just resolve a problem, you probably reduced provider workflow by X number of keystrokes, released X amount of AR, reduced denials by how many dollars.

All of these numbers show you are not only an expert in your field, but you can produce with results this is also called quantifiable successes.  You may only need one or two examples per client to really show your knowledge in this category.  The more examples the better though, this is still a brainstorming category and you want as large a list of Epic build or projects as possible.  Remember you want scenarios showing how much, how many, how often, how frequently.

For example which of the two statements look better to you if you were hiring a new Epic analyst?

• Updated rules to reduce volume of claims in claim edit workqueues.
• Modified several claim edit checks to reduce volume of claims incorrectly held by $250,000 over a two month period.

The second one is the obvious choice.  Why?  There are quantifiable results showing what happened when analyst two modified the claim edits.  There is a dollar volume and time period measurement present.  Whereas for the first analyst, all we know is they were modifying rules, and we do not know how effective they were in that case.  So make sure to accumulate your examples and keep them on hand.

Defining the Customer and Building Experiences

Before walking into an interview, interview experts will recommend you scout the business prior to entering the interview.  My recommendation is to scout the business before you even start creating your resume.  Even the minimal reviewing of the consultant requirements will glean some information in how to craft your resume.

As you move forward in your career as an Epic consultant, you gain access to a variety of soft skills and new Epic certifications.  (Yes consultants can gain about one new certification a year.)  So at each client you will inevitably practice different skill sets that apply to some clients but not all.  The key is identifying the job you are applying for.  Within each job there are a variety of keys in the position that will allow you to craft your resume.

Some key questions to ask yourself

• Do they want community connect experience?
• Does the position allow you to utilize all of your certifications or just a single one?
• Would any of your soft skills apply?
• Would any of the projects you have completed in the past mesh with the requirements of the position?

Attempt to match your project experience and soft skills with what they are asking.  By pulling this data directly from your list of soft skills, quantifiable successes, and successfully projects, there is not much left you need to do to complete your resume.

Do You Need a Summary In your Resume?

Some people leave a summary in their resume and others leave them out.  The inclusion of exclusion of this summary really depends on your list of experiences.

• Do you have enough project experiences to flesh out your history?
• Are you having trouble filling a single page of professional Epic Experiences?
• Can you explain what you hope to accomplish in your next position better than what is listed under your experiences?
• Are there any strong skills you possess that should be highlighted at the top of your resume that are not considered a certification or degree?

Keep the summary at four lines and do not become personal.  Just keep it to professional experiences and what you can bring to the table when entering this new engagement.

Unlike the Summary, the Employment History Important

Now that you have what you want to write and have studied your new prospect, you just need to pick a format.  Insert your summary if you feel it is relevant and will flesh out your resume.  Typically you will then have a list of clients and how long you worked at each.  Under each position, you need to include your list of quantifiable projects that you feel are most relevant.  You can do this in any order but I would list them in the following.

• Most relevant quantifiable successes
• Most relevant project successes
• Projects completed that could mesh with the client

Anything else listed would just be to fill space on your resume if you cannot come to a full page.

This was really all you needed to complete your resume.  Recruiters and IT managers want to see if you are certified and if you have any experiences that can be immediately applied to their current situation.  If they see at least one or two items on your resume that meshes, you will more than likely be queued for an interview.  This is an entirely different set of skills that we will breach for another day.

Of course I have only interviewed so many times and there are probably some things I could be missing out on when building a resume.  If you have any tips, please leave them in the comments below.

I would like to share a quick resource to help you quickly jump into the Epic consulting world.  While incredibly obvious to those in the consulting market, I had not even heard of this tool until I actually became a consultant.  Once set up, snagging an Epic consulting job can be as easy as ABC.

Make Sure You Are Already Certified

Before you get started, make sure you have what recruiters are already after, an Epic certification. If you do not this, you may need to find an alternate route.   If you do have one, make sure your New Version Trainings (NVTs) are up to date, skills listed, and your resume completed.

The Best Website for Linking Up With Recruiters

Now that you have all of your requirements up to par, create a LinkedIn profile.  All major job recruiters have premium accounts and are scrubbing the system.  Your only real requirement on linked is to post at least one Epic job and some of the experiences you have had there.  You do not have to go looking for Epic recruiters, they will come looking for you.

So, complete your profile as best you can. Upload a picture, complete your job history, finish your profile.  If you want maximum exposure, join some of the Epic groups.  Go to the Groups tab and then Groups Directory.  This will allow you to perform a search for Epic.  When I do a search this way, the very first group I find is Epic Jobs.  Sign up for this group and few others that may interest you.

The Wait Begins

At this point you do not really have to do anything.  If you completed your profile, listed some soft skills, and included your certification you should find emails just piling into your inbox.  When I say pile, 2-3 offers full of job opportunities every few days seem to be the norm.  Just make sure you accept all of the friend requests from recruiters.  Even if you are already a member of an Epic firm, this is part of the game and they expect you to connect with other recruiters.

So here is your four step process:

1. Sign up to post your resume at http://www.linkedin.com/
2. Complete your LinkedIn profile.
3. Sign up for your choice of Epic groups.
4. Profit

If you are not quite sure LinkedIn is the way you want to go or are unsure of your resume.  While not always immediately, I would love to connect.  I can be emailed directly at healthcareitconsulting@yahoo.com and I check this email regularly.  I have a network of recruiters that I associate with that I can submit a resume directly to and maybe get the ball rolling for you quicker.

For other great tips like this, you can sign up for our newsletter on the right sidebar.  Or if you have other great tips on getting noticed by recruiters, please feel free to leave everyone a message in the comments below.

For the average employer, the decision to hire or not hire a consultant during an implementation may very well be a make or break decision.  At an average cost of over $100-250/hr plus expenses, the decision to bring on a team of consultants is high cost.  The goal of this post is to explore the advantages and disadvantages of hiring a healthcare IT consultant.

Advantages to hiring a Healthcare IT Consultant

Consultants can fill holes in an implementation team quickly.  If we look at the Epic certification process, if you lose a member through natural attrition, that team member can take up to four months to replace.  3-4 weeks if the Epic is holding the class the week after hiring a new team member, then another 90 days to allow for studying and taking the multiple tests involved in certification.

Rapidly complete projects based on prior experiences under high stress scenarios.  Your team is hiring a consultant to bring experience to the team.  More than likely, your unique challenges are filled with pieces of build that match prior challenges for the consultant.  By leveraging these past experiences, your healthcare organization can advance the learning curve quicker and project team can leverage these experiences into learning the new system faster.

Process Improvement can be realized in a shorter time period.  Many organizations implement a higher transparency and more complete EHR program in Epic than an older system like Epic, but fail to deliver the changes in procedure crucial to success.  Sticking to the motto of how it always has been done typically results in higher AR and a slower attainment of monetary goals. By showing more efficient ways of tackling day to day activities, old processes can be phased out in shorter time period.

So what are the main advantages of hiring a Healthcare IT Consultant?

• Quickly fill gaps in the implementation team
• Rapidly complete projects in high stress situations
• Realize Process Improvement opportunities faster

What Are the Disadvantages to Hiring a Healthcare IT Consultant?

To all the gains a healthcare IT consultant can quickly bring to the newly implemented Epic system, there are some drawbacks that must be considered, one being the high cost.  As mentioned earlier, when a consultant is charging over $100/hr plus expenses, you are paying for premium skills.  In many cases, you are looking at a year’s salary for a full time employee paid within a few months’ time.

Your ROI (return on investment) may be much lower than the cost if you are not utilizing a consultant correctly.  If you drop a consultant on a team with poor leadership and force them to act under the constraints of that poor leadership, you may not feel the quick turnaround that a consultant can bring to your healthcare organization.

If you are not actively looking for a feedback, you may have a loose cannon on your hands.  While this can be good, it can also be a disaster.  If they are talking to customers but failing to deliver, then you may be looking at a sweet talker that is in reality helping your organization fail faster.  If the decision is to let a consultant out during the optimization phase of your implementation, make sure a member of your implementation team is at least keeping tabs of the consultant’s meeting and pulling status reports and promises made.

While I feel the cost of hiring a consultant is definitely outweighs the cons, being aware can allow you to prepare for the change a consultant “should” bring.

Again here are the major disadvantages of hiring a Healthcare IT consultant:

• Very high cost
• ROI may not justify high cost
• A loose cannon attitude without a status report can lead to false promises

The consultant experience is typically very engaging and can lead to great gains to your organization.  Just make sure to weigh the high cost against what you are contracting and always document their processes to ensure you can take advantage of the time a consultant spends onsite with your team.

Did I miss anything?  Are there other major advantages or disadvantages you would like discussed?  Get the conversation going and add a comment below.

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This is part 4 of a series to help newer analysts quash issues quickly and efficiently.  If you are new here, please start at part 1.  Otherwise let’s get going.  Today we are going to discuss one of the most important parts of building.  User acceptance, validation, signing off, or whatever the client wishes to call this stage is one of the most important steps.

“I have been doing this for fifteen years, I know what I was doing and did not need to test it.”  Those are the words from one of the first consultants I had worked with.  Of course, if she tested she would not have been having that conversation.

Get End User Approval

Of course with a system as complicated as Epic, there are going to be issues.  Lots and lots of little issues.  I need CPT X to show up in Y workqueue.  The tax ID just started showing up in box 32b instead of the group number.  I need you to move the name over two spaces so the HCFA looks right.  Each of these issues for you may be a very simple fix.  So you fix it and close the ticket.  Is that correct though?

People Love To Give Their Opinion

If you were to ask me my opinion of a build, I would be more than happy to tell you all about my thoughts.  Unless I opened the ticket though, my opinion only matters so far.  Yes I am being paid to express my opinion, but I am on a site to make the person I am reporting to happy and the end users I am creating build for happy.  I can create a piece of build and think it works great but you want the opinion of the end user.

You may occasionally run into the random end users that could care less about the end product and will just let you put anything into Production as long as you say it is a done deal.  More often though, they like to see what you built.  Sometimes a screenshot showing the new claim form with rearranged data will suffice.  In some cases you may need a face to face to make to fully explain the end result.

In all cases though, you are giving the end users an opportunity to give their opinion.  I don’t like how the new form looks.  You sent it to the wrong workqueue.  If they do not like it, they will let you know.  That is one thing you do not have to worry about, and it is a good thing.

One Thing I Forgot To Tell You

I cannot count how many times I presented a build, and I am hit with a, “but I need you to add something to it.”  This is good because you know before you finalized the build, it sucks because now you have to account for a new variable.

If you can update the build on the spot and quickly rerun your tests, you may still be able to pull off the approval and finalize everything.  It is unfortunately a little variable, but they may let you move part of the build into production and the new variable can become a separate issue.

My Favorite Meeting

I intensely dislike meetings, but there is one meeting I enjoy holding, a validation meeting with all of the end users.  Either of a weekly or biweekly basis, if you are able to pull all of your customers into a single room and walk through builds, test scenarios, and current issues, I think you may find this to be one of the most productive meetings on your calendar.

Just make sure this is a standing meeting and you always keep an agenda.  Otherwise you may find this to be a complaint meeting more than a productive meeting.  If you can secure an Epic AC to at least call in for each meeting, you will find the customers are even more likely to attend.  Of course if you are solving a batch of problems every Wednesday and actually delivering, the attendance rate will also max out.

My Recommendation?

If you are currently an Epic Analyst, try to set up a validation meeting with your end users for end user testing at least once to try it out.  If you are an Epic end user and typically have lots of outstanding issues, try to set up a meeting with your Epic team or the team lead.  Make sure they commit to at least two meetings.  One to walk through the issues and one to follow up with additional meetings as required.

Do you have any other ideas for getting end user sign off, do you have any ideas for topics you would like to see in the future?  Please leave a comment below or you can email me directly at healthcareitconsulting@yahoo.com