Home Forums Discussions Meaningful Use IT time spent

To all:

I do the IT work for an office that has 5 providers, 2 Front Desk, 2 Techs, 1 nurse, 1 office manager and 1 billing person each day (most of the staff is part-time but there are ALWAYS these jobs filled each day). We have 2 servers, (AC and LYTEC) with 5000 patients, 20 PCs/Laptop, wireless and wired and 5 printers, all spred out through 6 areas and 10 exam rooms. We also employ UpDox and have VPN setup for electronics receiving of labs.

I know a lot of the providers/spouses here on the UB do their own IT work, I was just wondering what you feel is the average amount of hours you spend on IT work each week.
The owner/provider of the practice sometimes questions why I have so many hours on my bill and I just wanted some idea of what the average time you feel an IT person should spend.

Thank you for any feedback you can offer me.

Brian
On top of the normal IT stuff, I also do all the reports for MU

Itemize your bill, or have the owner 'shadow ' your work.
That being said, I do most of the IT work, and I don't get paid since I am the owner.

I am an IT person and for a network that size I would spend about a couple of hours a month maintaining it. That assumes, of course, that staff isn't surfing crap all day.

Reports are subjective to complexity. I assume you are making custom reports and not just pulling what is built in to AC.

JamesNT

My two cents
$0.01- That's not a lot of staff or patients for 5 providers, so either the providers work at the hospital part-time or your job security is tenuous.

$0.01- There are too many variables, as in how new, stable are the hardware, software, interfaces, and all the permutations thereof? Is there someone else at the office who would think to try rebooting the computer? How much change are the providers wanting, planning? Do you program? Are you transitioning from any legacy software?...

I would start writing down everything you do with durations, and come up with a detailed job description.

The main justification for your position is the zero wait time and minimized loss of productivity for the staff and providers. We can wait days for some problems to get fixed, and then find out after he's gone that somethings not right, so add another day or two if he is busy.

Ok,

I guess I didn't explain myself well enough (typical for me).

I would just like to know how many hours (paid or not) people are spending doing something besides doctoring at their office. I do EVERYTHING that does not pertain to working directly with the patient. But, again, that is not my question. I just want to know how much time you either pay someone (which I know MOST of you do not) or you and/or your spouse/partner spend touching ANYTHING IT in your office NOT pertaining to entering DATA into AC.

ALL of the staff here expect to walk into the office, open their laptop/PC do what they need to do to enter DATA and then logoff at night. I do the rest. (This CAN NOT be changed and nothing else is negotiable for them to do).

Our office is VERY inefficient in its running (I know that, but can't get the provider to realize it). Yes, some of the providers ARE part-time (I guess I would say average amount of providers here at 1 time is 2 1/2).

Thanks again for your input so far,

Brian

I'm supporting several practices of various sizes and a few lawyers and other businesses. I haven't really had
any bills/charges after the initial setup. There's not really any maintenance charges since the clients are all pretty much using SSDs. No defrags necessary. Temp files are cleared automatically. AV scans run automatically.

On the server, backups are cleared automatically, no one really logs into that besides me.

Only get a call when they want to upgrade something or add more computers. Sometimes they want to buy them for their homes too.

I glance over the reports every week or day. Spotted a failed backup drive at one of the locations. Ordered a replacement and had it sent over.

As NY2GA_Doc indicated, you should itemize your bill or at least keep a log that you attach with the bill. I know most professionals often include a log of the tasks when they bill hourly. I stepped away from that model since I can do a lot more per hour than the average tech due to previous prep work or other methods.

Rather than charge an exorbitant hourly rate. I charge per task and that also allows me to delegate tasks out to multiple individuals. E.g. when you have multiple employees working simultaneously on the same project.

Brian, I do think you have explained yourself; it is just that people are answering from their own frame of reference rather than yours. The IT experts you have heard from here set things up and only spend a couple of hours a month on maintenance. Clearly, that is not what you are doing. This may be an extreme example, but it sounds like when a printer needs a new toner cartridge, you are the guy who puts it in. I don't think Sandeep and James are operating at that level. That is just at the extreme lower end of a long list of duties of increasing technical difficulty. Most of us who do this in our own practices are not paying by the hour for it, so I think we lose track of exactly how much time we spend. Perhaps we could give you a better answer if you could be more specific about the precise nature of your duties.

My guess would be that your employers just expect these things to "happen" and don't realize the extent of your contribution. As Dan points out, when there is a problem, you handle it immediately without any significant down time or productivity loss. Perhaps you should "go on strike" for a couple of weeks and see if they notice how valuable you are.

Could you give us a list of what you did over a two-week period and how many hours you spent?

I think your question is completely dependent on the state of the network. I know when I first got my network up and running there were always small little things that became issues that needed to be addressed. That first week I probably spent 20-30 hours installing and getting things worked out. Now probably an hour a week unless something changes (windows update breaking MSE, Updox connector service not working correctly, Quest lab interface not syncing, etc).

The key is to get things to the point that you never go to your IT closet - ever. IT departments should not be seen or heard from (reference a BBC program on netflix - The IT Crowd).

I have a tendency to 'try something new' which seems to occasionally disrupt things for a couple days as I try to fix things but I'm hoping moving things to VMs will help alleviate the effects of my tinkering to some extent!

On average I probably spend 1-5 hours a week with helping people with their desktop issues but the servers pretty much just run in the background (I have 2 servers (SBS 2011 and a terminal server), 10 computers, 10 terminals and a few laptops and smart phones - 4 providers (2 fresh out of residency this past July), 12k patient files, and 8-10 employees)

At one time when I had lots of IT clients, I would schedule quarterly meetings with them for regular Q & A just to get some face time. If I didn't they would go endless months without ever seeing me and then question why they should pay my bill.

JamesNT

We average about 2 hrs/week of IT support over the course of the year, excluding reports. When we started going electronic, I proclaimed very loudly "I am NOT going to be tech support for this system!! I am going to be busy doing doctor stuff, this is getting out of the hobby realm." It was a smart move on my part. When stuff does break, it is while I am trying to do my doctor stuff earning a lot more money than I pay my IT people.

Our system is very similar to yours. One of the staff is facile enough that she can do a lot of little things that lie between really basic Windows tasks and full-on IT support. IT does regular checks like restoring off site backups to assure they are working, making sure the anti-virus is updated for everyone, monitoring upgrades on the servers, and other maintenance tasks.

Brian,

I hope this comment is helpful from your perspective. I mean no rudeness, but I am being very frank.

Please continue your education. You are capable of doing whatever you have a passion for, including IT. Follow your dreams.

IMHO, you do not want to live for a long time in the tension you are feeling about having to justify your value.