Feedback Requested | IT Position at Duke University vs Health (Raleigh: chapel, transfer to)
Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill, CaryThe Triangle Area
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My family will be relocating to Durham once I secure a position. I have 10+ years experience as an IT Business Systems Analyst and most recently 1 year as a Project Manager.
In looking at possible positions, there is a clear distinction between the University and the Health side.
1. Looking for feedback on the pros and con's between the two
2. I do not have any Health IT experience. Do I still have a chance in getting a position working in that space, or do I have a major disadvantage?
Any feedback you could provide would greatly be appreciated.
Location: IN>Germany>ND>OH>TX>CA>Currently NoVa and a Vacation Lake House in PA
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I had one IT stint in a hospital setting, and I would say to avoid that if at all possible. It was the worse IT job I ever had. Hospitals never shut down and never stop. There has never been a more 365/24/7 operation than a hospital. I'm sure some of them are managed correctly, but if it's like most IT departments (under funded, under manned) then prepare to be on call constantly.
Duke University Medical Center (DUMC) just changed over to an EPIC based record keeping system a few years ago, they call it Maestro Care, I read in Forbes it cost Duke $700 million for the new system (now that's the business to be in!).
I don't know if all of the bugs have been worked out yet. I'm sure there are some similar IT problems with both settings like not being able to connect to servers, WIFI being down, printers not working properly, etc.
I work for DUMC, but in research, and we're not in the hospital and have our own IT guys (2 of them) that are just for the building I work in. So technically you could be working for DUMC and not be in the hospital setting, since almost all of the research (and there's a ton at Duke) falls under DUMC.
Like you mentioned, DUMC and Duke University are separate but related entities.
My husband works in IT for Duke Health. Their IT dept is called DHTS. If you work for the University side, then your dept is called OIT. Some systems are different, and the pay and benefits packages are different, but a lot of the IT stuff has overlap.
My husband has had people transfer to his group from OIT, and other people transfer out to OIT, doing essentially the same work. He has an OIT counterpart that he works with closely. People who transfer out to OIT often do it because they want the tuition benefit from being a University employee.
My husband's group does not deal with Maestro Care at all, but there is a whole team for that. For my husband's group, you would not need to know anything specific to healthcare. More regular IT stuff - I hear him talk about Sharepoint a lot. The above poster seems to be describing more helpdesk type positions, which is also not what my husband's group does, but would be similar for the OIT or DHTS side, but it didn't sound like that was what you were looking for anyway.
The above poster seems to be describing more help desk type positions, which is also not what my husband's group does, but would be similar for the OIT or DHTS side, but it didn't sound like that was what you were looking for anyway.
Actually the two IT guys in my building have the title of Network Systems Analyst III. Yes, they are our defacto "help desk", but we also have our own network just for our building and all of our research.
I am also in research, and we have a similar setup. We have a guy like that who helps us with out local network and systems. I consider him kind of a level up from "help desk" because the regular help desk people often don't really know much other than how to reset your password. But direct user support is still quite different than the kind of thing that my husband does.
My family will be relocating to Durham once I secure a position. I have 10+ years experience as an IT Business Systems Analyst and most recently 1 year as a Project Manager.
In looking at possible positions, there is a clear distinction between the University and the Health side.
1. Looking for feedback on the pros and con's between the two
2. I do not have any Health IT experience. Do I still have a chance in getting a position working in that space, or do I have a major disadvantage?
Any feedback you could provide would greatly be appreciated.
Cheers.
Hey, so first of all...IT is IT and Healthcare is Healthcare...If you were a IT Business Systems Analyst you more than likely spent a lot of your time working with some sort of SAP style software and worked with whatever business you worked for on fixing their specific needs. This could be anything from changing rules, policies, process, glossary...to literally writing code.
Now, IT with Healthcare is actually quite similar. My guess is that you would be working with the research facilities to solve any issues they may have "IT wise"...It really all depends on what kind of software they use as to what kind of issues you might run into. You might familiarize yourself with some of the following Healthcare Information Systems:
Meditech
Cerner
McKesson
Epic Systems
Siemens Healthcare
CPSI
Healthcare Management Systems
Healthland
Eclipsys
It sounds like Duke may have their own proprietary software (in which case you can't expected to know how to use it right away).
Some of the other users have mentioned not putting all your eggs into one basket. Here are some other companies you might consider which specialize is technology of some nature:
IT Works - (1987) - Privately owned niche software development company. They specialize in automating the administration of universities, hospitals, and scientific research programs.
Red Hat - (1993) - Raleigh - Software company providing open-source software products to the enterprise community.
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