I’m excited to join the distinguished Softek team of Millennium Medics. For the past 17 months, the bloggers have been offering real-world answers for common performance issues with the Cerner Millennium® system, the kind of straightforward actions those of us at client sites could readily implement. I should know. Until joining Softek at the end of the summer, I served as the Cerner implementation manager at Carondelet Health Network in Tucson. Over the past two years, I led the team that moved Carondelet from 2007.12 Cerner code to 2007.17 and then 2007.19. We also moved from the W32 version of Clinical Reporting to the new Clinical Reporting XR and installed the PowerChart®Local Access backup system and PowerInsight® report generating system. Before that I spent six years as an analyst at Cerner.
With my various roles and the titles they carried — at Softek I am now Director of Millennium Consulting Services — I have always had one primary responsibility: to survey the big picture and figure out how to put the pieces together to provide end-users a system they can actually use or, even more, a system they want to use. I believe that IT is an important tool in advancing healthcare and bringing order to the informational chaos that plagues the industry. All too often, however, clinicians resist adding technology to their workday. They want to care for patients, not spend time waiting for a computer to finish a command.
I can sympathize with their frustration, so I am committed to bringing a level of predictability to their everyday workflow. Once they begin electronic charting or ordering, we had better make sure the system performs as promised.
What can I bring to the Millennium discussion? Certainly not the in-depth system tuning and troubleshooting that David Hallberg has been serving up to system engineers and database administrators. My expertise lies on the application support side of the system. I will be able to address concerns from the clinicians’ point of view, to bridge the gap between the clinician and the system analyst. I hope my ideas will help your hospital’s IT and Support teams better understand each other and work together.
I’ll start off later this week with an exploration of the importance of faxes in the life of the primary care physician. Stay tuned.
