A Personal Blog
Restructuring?
Had a discussion today about possible restructuring here at work. The environment here is interesting.
13 hospitals. 2 of which employee roughly 10,000 people (big hospitals).
Over all the hospitals is a regional authority: the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority (WRHA). Total resources? Roughly 30K staff, 15K PC’s, 500 servers… Big place.
But, currently the WRHA doesn’t have a lot of mandating power, specifically in IT. Hospitals need to sign off to agree to do WRHA stuff. Rumour has it that this is changing soon, and many of our core apps will be come regional apps: Storage, Email, Filesystem, Directory Services…. Not to mention support roles like Network and (specifically) Helpdesk.
Obviously when each hospital has 1-3 server guys (for a total of nearly 30 server guys) there are going to be redundancies. And I’m the most Junior one here.
So, the options are fairly slim:
1. I won’t get fired / moved
2. I’ll get moved to a different role in IS/IT or Project Management
3. I’ll get fired
Part of me wouldn’t mind being fired. Public sector jobs are generous with their severance, even if you’ve been at the job for less than a year (specifically if it’s a Skilled position).
So we’ll see what happens. If I don’t get fired or moved there are some very, very cool projects in the next 1-2 years which I’d love to be involved in.
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| Print article | This entry was posted by Jeremy Wright on April 20, 2004 at 1:04 pm, and is filed under Work. Follow any responses to this post through RSS 2.0. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site. |
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about 7 years ago
I wouldn’t worry too much about it, they’ve been discussing this since the WRHA was the WHA and WCA, and nothing has moved on with it. Also, how many hospitals have joined the WRHA other than HSC and DLC?
Other than St. B, most of the other “server guys” are also the network guy and the desktop guy.
That whole thing about regional apps is also a pie in the sky dream. Every hospital has a different and incompatible ATD system, and different clinical apps. Other than parts of radiology and that horrible interface engine at St. B, the hospitals barely talk (email doesn’t count).
There have been several attempts at rolling out regional apps that have gone nowhere. St. B’s new ATD system was supposed to be regional, the Radiology/PACS stuff was supposed to go everywhere, and let’s not forget SmartHealth that was supposed to revolutionize pharmacare!
I also think you’re being generous with your numbers. The other hospitals, other than St. B, employ “jack of all trades” for the most part, the server guys also handle desktops and networking. I don’t know any of the hospitals where the core technology people are not busy, if you pool them all together, there will still be work for everyone.
Sean
about 7 years ago
Hey Sean,
Actually we’ve brought 2 regional apps online, including merging all the directory trees, since I started. Regional email and storage will likely happen in the next 2 years, at which point we’ll effectively be “one” organization.
It’ll only be a matter of time before the other apps become regional (without the framework I can’t imagine the work that would have needed to go into regionalizing apps on the network side of things).
As far as hospitals joining the WRHA, Ian will likely have his full authority for all things IT-related legislated by summer.
Fun fun :)
about 7 years ago
I don’t count email, directory, and storage as core apps in health. ;) ATD, ICD-10, PACS, labs etc — those are core apps. (OK, PACS is an example of storage, but probably not in the same way you’re thinking)
On the ICD-10 front, you should have been around when the deadline came to convert. That was funny, because there were 10 incompatible systems that all had to be upgraded. Some were developed in house, some were from vendors that went out of business. I think HSC had to pay some fines because they were a year behind or something like that.
It took me a couple of years to understand just how data and apps are used in the various facilities and RHAs. Just because you run out of one directory or email system doesn’t make you one organization.
Sean
about 7 years ago
Agreed, but bringing email, directory and storage into a regional framework does mean that 80% of the day-to-day server responsibilities are shared (of course you do that and SAN, A/V, anti-spam, webservers and DB’s are centralized too).
Core health apps? ICD-10 is now a fully regional app. It’s in our DC, but in it’s own tree, subnet, etc. We could move it anywhere right now. People “login” using their own network profile (seamlessly), and get full access via CITRIX to the 1 ICD-10 app (Med2020′s app in this case), which routes to their local resources (printing, etc).
As far as ATD, labs, etc… Those can’t REALLY happen without regionalizing the core infrastructure. Without that, at best, you’re hacking away. If you have central email, directory, storage, etc, all of a sudden regionalizing these apps becomes easier and may make sense at the next upgrade cycle.
Anyways, I’m quite happy to keep working here (honestly) in server, elsewhere or to work somewhere else.
The changes that will happen (everyone’s saying 6 months, I’m guessing 2 years) are great changes, make perfect sense and will save money, staffing, resources, etc.