Just an EHR Go-Live Consultant

I just came across a fascinating look into the lives of EHR implementation go-live consultants and what their careers are going to look like going forward. It’s not news that EHR implementations and thus EHR Go-lives are slowing after the government incentive driven EHR frenzy that we’ve experienced the last 5 years. This means that all those people that were getting paid good money to support all these EHR go-lives are going to have to find new work to do.

Tonya M. Iles, Implementation Consultant, Go-Live Support, and Owner of TMI Consulting LLC, offered this insight into the value of an EHR go-live consultant.

Lately I have noticed a trend of being told “Oh, you are just a Go-Live consultant” when interviewing for a contract. 5 years ago I left a full time job to enter the consulting world full time and fulfill my dream of having my own business and traveling. I have traveled across the US training countless clinicians and office support staff on various healthcare EMR’s. Each time I walk onto a hospital unit, into an OR or into an Ambulatory practice, my goal is the same. To quickly gain the trust of the staff in my ability to train them, assess where everyone is in their knowledge of the system and have them feel comfortable and somewhat proficient in a short amount of time while I am there onsite. I take my job extremely seriously-I have been a clinician and understand the stresses providers are facing in taking care of their patients. You can have the most incredible system built and ready to use, but if people don’t have the proper training to utilize it, it becomes useless and lives can be affected and revenue will be lost. I have a passion for training people and always have. So I am not “just” a Go- Live consultant. I am someone who thrives on helping other people to become more efficient and successful and will continue to give my all to each and every client.

I expect that many EHR go-live consultants are going to have a challenge transitioning jobs over the next couple years. However, I expect that most of them are like Tonya. They care about healthcare. They really want to help EHR users be more efficient and effective. I expect most won’t have an issue finding a place for them in this more mature EHR world.

About the author

John Lynn

John Lynn is the Founder of HealthcareScene.com, a network of leading Healthcare IT resources. The flagship blog, Healthcare IT Today, contains over 13,000 articles with over half of the articles written by John. These EMR and Healthcare IT related articles have been viewed over 20 million times.

John manages Healthcare IT Central, the leading career Health IT job board. He also organizes the first of its kind conference and community focused on healthcare marketing, Healthcare and IT Marketing Conference, and a healthcare IT conference, EXPO.health, focused on practical healthcare IT innovation. John is an advisor to multiple healthcare IT companies. John is highly involved in social media, and in addition to his blogs can be found on Twitter: @techguy.

   

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