So, what is Managed Services anyway?
It’s a question I often get when talking with other Epic Analysts who are familiar with FTE and Consulting roles but not familiar with Managed Services as another option of employment. Managed Services engagements can vary to meet the needs of every healthcare organization. With that said, I’ll answer the question from my experience with Pivot Point’s Managed Services team and my day-to-day work.
Pivot Point Managed Services Team
Our Pivot Point Managed Services team of about 18 analysts across the various Epic applications is actually a team within a team since we work alongside an FTE Epic team. As partners with the full time analysts we handle the daily incident tickets, projects that are scoped under 40 hours of work and all Epic upgrades.
This frees up the FTE analysts to tackle long delayed projects, clean-up and new facility build. With the variety of work, it’s not surprising that no two days are alike but even with that variety I tend to have a consistent approach to my day.
Like many, my day starts with the usual review of new emails, Teams messages and any meetings I might have for the day then a check in the ticketing management system for any new incidents, requests or ticket updates from the day before. If there are no project tasks needing attention, I work any ongoing incidents and requests to get them to resolution knowing that there will soon be other new tickets to take their place.
Typical Ticket Issues
The tickets can run the gamut in terms of challenges. For example, some are routine tasks, while others are challenging and require a team effort or our Epic TS support. As an Ambulatory analyst we tend to get pretty much anything in the way of types of issues. (I am sure all other Ambulatory analysts are nodding their heads in agreement).
A quick review of the tickets currently in my queue show a few trends. They include the ubiquitous printing tickets, e-prescribing issues, a missing sidebar tab (in this case WFER related), deprecated print group replacement, In Basket pools to add or remove from a user, an encounter not able to be signed, an update to an EAP Order and a few other odd issues.
Many of our fixes or requests require they go through the Change Approval process so the change control meetings are part of the weekly routine. We are able to move our own build through the Content Management/Data Courier process. Adherence to the local process builds on the confidence our client has with our team as a whole as well as individually.
Managed Services Project Work
Project work tends to follow its own schedule and sometimes requires balancing with the daily ticket work. The challenges of new build for Epic upgrades or enhancement projects is a nice change of pace. The project flow from Nova note review through build, testing and implementation lends itself to the satisfaction of a longer term project that you are able to see through from beginning to end with a definitive start and end.
Completing a longer term project reminds me of how it felt to complete a semester-long class in college. From the first day of reading the syllabus to mid-term testing to the end of semester final or project, it always felt great to be done and have everything go well.
Our Managed Services team handles the after hours on-call on a rotation. Therefore, about once every eights weeks I cover after hours on-call for the clinical applications. We have a secondary on-call person assigned from our client in case there are issue we aren’t sure how to handle.
Final Thoughts
Returning to the initial inquiry: what precisely constitutes Managed Services? Hopefully this gives some insight into the day to day work we handle. Something I enjoy is that we work as a team within Managed Services and with the client’s application teams.
It is a long term commitment over multiple years, not just a 3–6 month contract. It is a broad variety of work and not limited to a single project or work effort. We have opportunities to get additional certifications based on the needs of the client. With a small team, it’s extremely helpful to have multiple certifications to support any application needed.
Pivot Point is an awesome company to work for no matter the role. If you’re looking for a new opportunity, you should check us out.
