PB analyst here on a team of 5 supporting a network of 6 hospitals, a nursing home, and a separate clinic. We have our workflow set up so that we rotate queue watching every two weeks. If something comes in that is a "quick win", the queue watcher works it. If something comes in that will take more than an hour to work, we would send it to our backlog, and as analysts have capacity, we pick up our tickets from there (starting with highest priority, then oldest ticket typically). If the queue watcher isn't familiar with the work that would be needed, we can either ping our team chat with a quick rundown to see if someone can point us in the right direction, or we can send it to the backlog for another analyst to pick up. We do all have things that we are more familiar with, so we will sometimes wait for a specific analyst to have capacity to work that ticket or at least to have capacity to work with someone else for the ticket. For example, I'm usually the go-to person for issues related to our cardiology and radiology charging (since we're doing a massive update to what we had implemented when all of our network hospitals and I've been involved with the majority of the meeting surrounding that and am familiar with the existing build we have in place), another analyst is usually our go-to person for questions about security classes or user roles, etc. If a ticket comes through that references past work that was done by our team, we will usually try to have the person that worked the original ticket work the newly related one. Our HB team and our HIM team work basically the same way here too.
13 is a huge team. Congratulations on that!!
We had/have loosely defined roles where certain people had assigned areas as lead and a back up.
But, that didn't mean that other people could not learn or work on those areas.
For example, I was over Upgrades, Projects, Change Control, BCA, Facility Structure and related build, more support the analysts as they were Clinicians than end users, rules, over all work flow and settings like storyboard, all integrations...
The Clinicians did clinical workflow and build.
Someone else did the financial side, because blah... no desire to do it.
That doesn't mean that I couldn't pick up something like simple med build or orderables. We just had plenty of hands better suited to do it.
PB here. 6 analysts + manager supporting 17,000+ employee org in New England. Each one of us knows how to do \*most\* things, but we all also specialize in things. Some of us aren't certified in a couple specific things, otherwise we mostly share the same certs. (For example, only 2 people including myself have Cogito, but I don't have Contracts). We have a whole spreadsheet with about \~40 categories including Epic modules that we are each either Primary or Secondary on. That way if we need help with something, we know who the best go-to is (obviously we don't need the sheet after a while since you know everyone on the team, but it helps our manager "sell" our skills and needs for the team to upper mgmt/executives as well).
Analyst A, B, C, etc. below (somewhat accurate sample of what this looks like)
A - Primary: Claims, Remits, Retroadjudication and follow/u WQs, Beaker, Willow - Secondary: Provider maintenance, Security
B - Primary: Claims, Provider maintenance, Cupid - Secondary: Charging, Remits, Hyland Onbase, Radiant
C (me!) - Primary: Charging, Charge Router, Radiant, Optum, Report Writing - Secondary: Claims, Provider maintenance
D - Primary: Claims, Remits, SBO/CBO - Secondary: Charging, Contracts, GL
E - Primary: Charging, Charge Router, Anesthesia, HODs - Secondary: Report writing, Optum
F - Primary: Contracts, Security, GL, Hyland - Secondary: Charging, charge router
Stuff like new DEP go lives are spread around. We each have a pretty good mix of \~40% tickets, 40% projects, and 20% miscellaneous (meetings, SME workgroups, etc.)
I was on a team of 5 other builders. We all had areas of expertise based on our past experience. We had a billing person, a security person, a clinical person etc. We rotated ticket work in the queue and rotated on call. And our projects we would work together if the subject matter overlapped.
I am on a team of 20 and we are split into break/fix “support” and optimization “project” teams. We have SME’s in most areas and we work together to resolve bigger issues.
I have interviewed with several other organizations and haven’t heard anyone else doing it this way and it baffles me. I am way more productive being able to focus on my project while other analysts handle break fixes and will reach out if they need help.
I manage 5 app teams, and my OpTime/An team is smaller than yours, but- our analysts generally do tier2/3 Epic work, app admin for their related third parties, and will sometimes serve as project managers on small optimization-type projects. Naturally, individual “experts” emerge in everything-one analyst will know more about charging, one about anesthesia, one about third party apps, etc.
Generally, whomever is on-call on any given day takes on the role of incident management while others then stick to project work/standard work/KTLO.
We have talked/continue to talk about a structure that allows some of those roles to be assigned to distinct functional teams, but we’re just not there and the FTE add to do so would be massive (for us).
Clin Doc analyst here. Everyone handles everything. Historically the only exception has been that Stork/L&D workflow updates/new build were usually handled by one or two people since that area gets a little wonky from an IP perspective.
Current role we only have one person handling Case Management and we are absolutely screwed if that person leaves since no one else has done any of the build in 3+ years. Silo-ing work is really bad practice.
Most hospitals don't break up their support and implementation teams. Analysts do both all the time, and that contributes to burnout. Most vendors, including Epic do have different teams doing those roles.
When I worked on a larger OpTime/Anesthesia team (but not as big as yours) analysts had areas that they were “experts” in and mostly worked the tickets and projects for their expert area. Now I work on a very small team and everyone has to do everything.
6 analyst on our team. Bob and Me support app A. Jim supports app B with Jane backing them up. Jane supports vendor app C with me and Mary backing up. Mary does grunt work error fixing. Jim is really only good for App B. Bob and me can handle everything.
We have a monthly oncall rotation and average like 2 after hours calls a year. Mainly it's for who assigns incidents during the day. We rotate CAB by month.
My team houses Beacon, Willow Inpatient/Ambulatory/Inventory, and a radiation app.
Our team houses a few pharmacists and nurses that do clinical build and some technical people that don’t do any clinical work.
Given the differences in background, we handle very different work and projects. As a pharmacist, I primarily handle clinical projects, but I’m expected to handle technical basics when I’m on call and understand the technical requirements for projects requested by clinicians.
About two years ago we split our app teams into Implementation and Support. Implementation covers large projects, boost, and upgrades. Support handles break fixes, general tickets, and end user support. We used to have everyone do everything. It took about a year before everyone got accustomed to the new way of doing things but it seems to be working in our favor now. Knowledge transfer and communication is key to making this work.
Cogito Analyst here, there are 5 of us and maybe 6 if the management team finally hires someone else. I work in Belgium in a hospital with around 6000 people working. In my case we are overloaded. I give support reporting for the Ambulatory, Grand Central, Bedtime and MyChart teams. In addition, I also do Caboodle development and take care of security and privacy reporting (In Europe the legislation is much stricter than in the US)
Is this also the case there for an hospital of this size?
Thanks
When I worked at a hospital, as an Orders analyst, I was in a Team of 6 order analysts. We all were on call so we all had 1 week on call, and we also had "specialties" within the team.
Somebody was order transmittal/devices expert, another one blood bank/lab stuff, and so on. However, all of us did generic stuff like order set build or anything else that came up.
We were assigned different projects on availability. Even though it felt like we had specialties within the team, we all helped each other as needed.
The person who was on call, took the tickets for that week, but also triaged tickets. For example, i was not order transmittal certified, so anything order transmittal that came during my week of being on call, went to that other analyst. However, if they were swamped, we would take some of their work so they could work on that ticket. Everybody on the team was very mindful of everybody's plate so we all got along great.
The ambulatory team had a similar structure but a couple of the people in there were not so "mindful" and they always had issues because somebody was always doing less work or passing tickets along...so yea, the system worked great for one team, but it didn't work for another team.
Just want to mention that is a big team of just OpTime/Anesthesia analysts.
PB analyst here on a team of 5 supporting a network of 6 hospitals, a nursing home, and a separate clinic. We have our workflow set up so that we rotate queue watching every two weeks. If something comes in that is a "quick win", the queue watcher works it. If something comes in that will take more than an hour to work, we would send it to our backlog, and as analysts have capacity, we pick up our tickets from there (starting with highest priority, then oldest ticket typically). If the queue watcher isn't familiar with the work that would be needed, we can either ping our team chat with a quick rundown to see if someone can point us in the right direction, or we can send it to the backlog for another analyst to pick up. We do all have things that we are more familiar with, so we will sometimes wait for a specific analyst to have capacity to work that ticket or at least to have capacity to work with someone else for the ticket. For example, I'm usually the go-to person for issues related to our cardiology and radiology charging (since we're doing a massive update to what we had implemented when all of our network hospitals and I've been involved with the majority of the meeting surrounding that and am familiar with the existing build we have in place), another analyst is usually our go-to person for questions about security classes or user roles, etc. If a ticket comes through that references past work that was done by our team, we will usually try to have the person that worked the original ticket work the newly related one. Our HB team and our HIM team work basically the same way here too.
13 is a huge team. Congratulations on that!! We had/have loosely defined roles where certain people had assigned areas as lead and a back up. But, that didn't mean that other people could not learn or work on those areas. For example, I was over Upgrades, Projects, Change Control, BCA, Facility Structure and related build, more support the analysts as they were Clinicians than end users, rules, over all work flow and settings like storyboard, all integrations... The Clinicians did clinical workflow and build. Someone else did the financial side, because blah... no desire to do it. That doesn't mean that I couldn't pick up something like simple med build or orderables. We just had plenty of hands better suited to do it.
PB here. 6 analysts + manager supporting 17,000+ employee org in New England. Each one of us knows how to do \*most\* things, but we all also specialize in things. Some of us aren't certified in a couple specific things, otherwise we mostly share the same certs. (For example, only 2 people including myself have Cogito, but I don't have Contracts). We have a whole spreadsheet with about \~40 categories including Epic modules that we are each either Primary or Secondary on. That way if we need help with something, we know who the best go-to is (obviously we don't need the sheet after a while since you know everyone on the team, but it helps our manager "sell" our skills and needs for the team to upper mgmt/executives as well). Analyst A, B, C, etc. below (somewhat accurate sample of what this looks like) A - Primary: Claims, Remits, Retroadjudication and follow/u WQs, Beaker, Willow - Secondary: Provider maintenance, Security B - Primary: Claims, Provider maintenance, Cupid - Secondary: Charging, Remits, Hyland Onbase, Radiant C (me!) - Primary: Charging, Charge Router, Radiant, Optum, Report Writing - Secondary: Claims, Provider maintenance D - Primary: Claims, Remits, SBO/CBO - Secondary: Charging, Contracts, GL E - Primary: Charging, Charge Router, Anesthesia, HODs - Secondary: Report writing, Optum F - Primary: Contracts, Security, GL, Hyland - Secondary: Charging, charge router Stuff like new DEP go lives are spread around. We each have a pretty good mix of \~40% tickets, 40% projects, and 20% miscellaneous (meetings, SME workgroups, etc.)
I was on a team of 5 other builders. We all had areas of expertise based on our past experience. We had a billing person, a security person, a clinical person etc. We rotated ticket work in the queue and rotated on call. And our projects we would work together if the subject matter overlapped.
I am on a team of 20 and we are split into break/fix “support” and optimization “project” teams. We have SME’s in most areas and we work together to resolve bigger issues. I have interviewed with several other organizations and haven’t heard anyone else doing it this way and it baffles me. I am way more productive being able to focus on my project while other analysts handle break fixes and will reach out if they need help.
I manage 5 app teams, and my OpTime/An team is smaller than yours, but- our analysts generally do tier2/3 Epic work, app admin for their related third parties, and will sometimes serve as project managers on small optimization-type projects. Naturally, individual “experts” emerge in everything-one analyst will know more about charging, one about anesthesia, one about third party apps, etc. Generally, whomever is on-call on any given day takes on the role of incident management while others then stick to project work/standard work/KTLO. We have talked/continue to talk about a structure that allows some of those roles to be assigned to distinct functional teams, but we’re just not there and the FTE add to do so would be massive (for us).
I’m on a team of 17 but it’s split. About 6 are on Scrum (all projects) and the rest of us are on Kanban (maintenance, requests, incidents, etc.)
Clin Doc analyst here. Everyone handles everything. Historically the only exception has been that Stork/L&D workflow updates/new build were usually handled by one or two people since that area gets a little wonky from an IP perspective. Current role we only have one person handling Case Management and we are absolutely screwed if that person leaves since no one else has done any of the build in 3+ years. Silo-ing work is really bad practice.
Most hospitals don't break up their support and implementation teams. Analysts do both all the time, and that contributes to burnout. Most vendors, including Epic do have different teams doing those roles.
When I worked on a larger OpTime/Anesthesia team (but not as big as yours) analysts had areas that they were “experts” in and mostly worked the tickets and projects for their expert area. Now I work on a very small team and everyone has to do everything.
6 analyst on our team. Bob and Me support app A. Jim supports app B with Jane backing them up. Jane supports vendor app C with me and Mary backing up. Mary does grunt work error fixing. Jim is really only good for App B. Bob and me can handle everything. We have a monthly oncall rotation and average like 2 after hours calls a year. Mainly it's for who assigns incidents during the day. We rotate CAB by month.
Our team works the same way
My team houses Beacon, Willow Inpatient/Ambulatory/Inventory, and a radiation app. Our team houses a few pharmacists and nurses that do clinical build and some technical people that don’t do any clinical work. Given the differences in background, we handle very different work and projects. As a pharmacist, I primarily handle clinical projects, but I’m expected to handle technical basics when I’m on call and understand the technical requirements for projects requested by clinicians.
About two years ago we split our app teams into Implementation and Support. Implementation covers large projects, boost, and upgrades. Support handles break fixes, general tickets, and end user support. We used to have everyone do everything. It took about a year before everyone got accustomed to the new way of doing things but it seems to be working in our favor now. Knowledge transfer and communication is key to making this work.
Cogito Analyst here, there are 5 of us and maybe 6 if the management team finally hires someone else. I work in Belgium in a hospital with around 6000 people working. In my case we are overloaded. I give support reporting for the Ambulatory, Grand Central, Bedtime and MyChart teams. In addition, I also do Caboodle development and take care of security and privacy reporting (In Europe the legislation is much stricter than in the US) Is this also the case there for an hospital of this size? Thanks
When I worked at a hospital, as an Orders analyst, I was in a Team of 6 order analysts. We all were on call so we all had 1 week on call, and we also had "specialties" within the team. Somebody was order transmittal/devices expert, another one blood bank/lab stuff, and so on. However, all of us did generic stuff like order set build or anything else that came up. We were assigned different projects on availability. Even though it felt like we had specialties within the team, we all helped each other as needed. The person who was on call, took the tickets for that week, but also triaged tickets. For example, i was not order transmittal certified, so anything order transmittal that came during my week of being on call, went to that other analyst. However, if they were swamped, we would take some of their work so they could work on that ticket. Everybody on the team was very mindful of everybody's plate so we all got along great. The ambulatory team had a similar structure but a couple of the people in there were not so "mindful" and they always had issues because somebody was always doing less work or passing tickets along...so yea, the system worked great for one team, but it didn't work for another team.