Health Care IT -- Questions

veritas_libertas

I have read different articles talking about how Health Care is going to be the next big thing for IT professionals, and I have seen several different jobs open up in my area. I realize that since I want to eventually move into security this might be a good area for me to try and get into.

I have a a couple of questions for those that are in the Health Care industry:

1. Is the pay good?
2. What do you have to do to get in?
3. What is typical OS/Server OS?

Hyper-Me

I can't speak for largescale healthcare (i.e. Hospitals), but we have several clients that are doctors offices/specialists, etc.

Generally they are on SBS like most SMB's we have, but they run usually severa TS apps. and there is a lot changing/a lot being demanded of us to get them geared up for electronic medical records. Which is where I think people are getting the "healthcare is the next IT boon" stuff. EMR might be a big thing, but from what i've seen there are already tons of companies with programs written to fill this space. Mainly, the offices just need someone to tie it into what they have and keep it running.

blargoe

I've never worked for one, but some people I know have worked for some local hospitals. OS platforms were mixed bag. Storage is big because of all the records I guess. On-call and after hours expectations were pretty high compared to a normal company. I don't know if these things are the "norm" for health care though.

fly351

I worked for a hospital as a computer tech for about 6 months (temp position) back in 2003. At that level the pay was between $16-18/hr but obviously that will differ depending on where you live. System Admins/Engineers were probably in the $50k range and up, just depends on what you do and experience.

They ran Windows infrastructure, Citrix thin clients for health care systems (I believe they were Unix servers), but everything else was pretty standard to the needs of an organization. Honestly not much different than working for a big corporation IMO. Oh besides the regulations and standards for health care.

brianeaglesfan

I'm currently working for a large healthcare system doing a combination of tier 1 / 2 support and with available overtime make over 50k a year. You have 2 different sides to it, general infrastructure support, which I'm doing, and clinical application support, with positions that tend to be filled by those with a clinical background. I've spoken with others who work for large healthcare systems in other areas and the salaries are comparable to ours... even those that don't pay very well, from what I've seen, offer other benefits, such as tuition reimbursement of up to 6k a year. As far as getting in, for general support it helps to know someone, which is how I got in. Otherwise having a clinical background is great. We've run a mixed Windows / Novell environment for years but are currently migrating away from Novell.

pml1

I'm currently working for a medium-size health care company. I feel like the pay is slightly below average, but I feel like that is more a result of the company I work for than the industry.

We have one Unix server that hosts a clinical application. All other servers and workstations are windows (2003/XP) with a smattering of Citrix thin clients. We are in the process of implementing a SAN for storage, and I assume that will be hot in healthcare for a while.

Honestly, I don't think getting in to healthcare IT is all that different from getting into any IT job. To me, it seems more dependent on the role your applying for than the industry. The company I work for places pretty high value on certs, but from other job postings I've seen in healthcare IT, that may not be universal across the industry.

All in all, I think healthcare IT is a good place to be. HITECH mandates and movement toward electronic medical records are causing many health care companies to expand IT departments. I also think healthcare is a good place to prepare for a career in security. HIPAA compliance is something everyone in our IT department deals with. We don't have any "security" job titles, but it's part of everyone's job.

arwes

I worked as a "Computer Operator" for 3.5 years at a nonprofit hospital, which was bought by a for profit hospital system. Basically I ran backup jobs overnight and would handle any support calls from the nursing staff. Our staff consisted of the following:

2 Computer Operators
1 Help Desk employee
1 PC technician
1 Network Administrator
1 IT Analyst
3 Programmers
1 IT Director

1) In my case, the pay wasn't great at all (started at $9.50, PC techs got a few bucks more). I know they started programmers out around $55k, and the network admin made much less...around $35k.

2) I had previous experience, though it was ISP phone support. I also had the A+ and Network + at the time. They showed me the stack of college graduates who applied for the job (which is really sad since it's entry level). Nearly all of them only had work experience in fast food restaurants.

3) Servers and software were about as diverse as you can get. Here's a list of some servers I can remember:

IBM AS/400 (ran custom lab software)
IBM AIX (ran QuadraMed Affinity)
Aviion DG/UX (ran Patient 1 patient accounting software)

And of course, we had several Windows Server 2003 boxes that I had hardly anything to do with. Shortly before our contracted network admin got the axe (he ignored a failing NTBackup job on a VMware server for two weeks and the array failed), he set up a few virtual servers including Kronos for time card management and a Websense machine. One of the VM's was the storage location for everyone's My Documents, hence the non renewal of his contract.

When the new company took over they tossed out the AIX machine as well as the old DG/UX machines in favor of running a single program from McKesson. Last I heard though, they did keep the AS/400 and the lab system because it was far superior to the lab component from McKesson.

TechJunky

I work as a Systems Analyst for a the biggest hospital in my state. I do anything from break/fix when helpdesk/ITS is unable to, to doing application upgrades, updates, dealing with permission issues, creating vbs/sql scripts/SSIS packages etc. I also deal with the server team with lifecycling a lot of our physical boxes to virtual, I deal with HL7 feeds and a lot of ADT data. You HAVE to have UNIX skills in this field along with databse understanding as everything is driven by UNIX systems for HL7 information and most applications use Oracle 10i or SQL 2005. I am currently working on a 6 million dollar nurse call project where I get to go to Florida for training for a week. This is a planned 2 year project. I will then have ongoing training for a good 2 months when the project kicks off here in August.

Starting pay for what I do is 70k and goes up to 95k.
DBA's start at 35hr and go up to 50hr.
Project Manager start at 45hr.

It is a great field and I have learned very little to be honest about IT related things, but I have learned a ton of how the health industry works.

Great gig, great people.

eMeS

veritas_libertas wrote: »

1. Is the pay good?
2. What do you have to do to get in?
3. What is typical OS/Server OS?

I have several customers now in this industry. Here's what I can tell you:

1 - Pay - Like anything else, this varies significantly by experience and position. I know people in healthcare IT that make from $50k to $250k+

2 - To get in - There are a significant number of people that come from the medical side of this business into IT in this field. There are also quite a few people that come in through a service desk or NOC path. Those would be the entry level positions in IT in that world. However, the ones that I currently have as customers seem to always be hiring for positions at all levels.

3 - OS's - You'll find a mix of just about everything under the sun. From mainframes to large scale *nix to supercomputers at some research institutions all the way to the ubiquitous desktop OS's.

I just delivered an ITIL class this week for my customer in New Jersey that is a hospital management company. They are a non-profit and are growing like crazy, and seem to always be looking for good experienced people in their IT organization.

The other thing that I can tell you that I see in this field that seems to be more extreme than others is that the IT departments are constantly getting their chains pulled from a budget perspective. In any industry where you are not in the direct delivery of whatever the business does this will happen, but it seems to be more extreme in the customers that I have in this industry.

You'll find that IT in this area tends to get yanked around by business decisions that are often made at the last minute. But then again, that happens in many areas....

The one vibe that I almost from every health care IT organization that I work with is there is a definite esprit d'corps in these places that you don't always see elsewhere. They often seem like big happy families, with many tenured people in place.

MS

veritas_libertas

Thanks for the responses. I am going to apply for a job at local hospital in my area and see what happens.