Some relatively distant co-workers told me today that I gave a good presentation in our Operations Meeting. Yay!

As I mentioned in a recent post, I take the shuttle back and forth to campus multiple times a day and there are sometimes some very interesting conversations going on. Usually about people’s weekend activities or the buzz around campus, but nothing ever too private. To add a little perspective, the seating in the shuttle is two long rows down each side of the bus, so its not like people sit in their own rows and can control how loudly they talk. Pretty much, if you have a conversation, you should expect that everyone can hear it.

So, on the way back to my office today, a couple people were talking about their grad school classes and other benign topics, but then switched to talking about some interviews the man had recently conducted. The woman obviously knew what the position was and had an option about who should fill that spot. Then, they actually start using FULL NAMES of employees who have interviewed and how they think they would do. Normally I wouldn’t say anything, but after they mentioned a friend of mine’s name, I really couldn’t help myself. After all, we are supposed to uphold a certain “credo” at Vanderbilt and you really just don’t need to be talking like that.

I leaned over and said, in what I thought was a nice, quiet voice, “this probably isn’t a conversation you really want to have on the shuttle”. Well. You’d think I’d asked the woman to take off all her clothes and dance around the parking lot. The look she gave me was a mix of incredulousness and shock. I felt like I had to defend myself immediately and I just said, “you know, about interviews and stuff”. And she goes “Oh, well, we work on the same team so….”. I thought for a moment and then said, “Well, you never know who is listening and all I’m saying is you probably don’t want to mention people’s names in this kind of atmosphere”. She continued to look at me like I was completely out of my mind and “who was I?” to say something to her.

I can understand the defensiveness one instinctively gets when someone you don’t know challenges whatever you’re doing. Even if you’re in the wrong, you feel like somehow the other person as wronged you. That woman is probably telling all her office mates about a nosy goodie-two-shoes who chastised her on the shuttle. And I thought far enough ahead to consider that might actually happen, but ran the risk anyway. This really was inappropriate! If they hadn’t used people’s names, I wouldn’t have said anything, but, come on! Right!?

Some times I do stupid shit, not because I think I’ll enjoy it, but because deep down I know I’ll be able to tell someone who appreciates how stupid it was. Well, now that I work in an office of one instead of eight, I don’t really have anyone to tell! So I’m going to bore the general public with my stupid story.

It’s really not that exciting…that’s why it’s stupid.

My new office is about 1 mile from the main campus, so I take a shuttle back and forth multiple times a day, depending on how many meetings I have on campus. The shuttle ride takes about 10 minutes to get there, but like 20 minutes to get back because of all the stops. I had just missed the 12:15 shuttle from campus and decided, you know what, I’m gonna walk. I know its hot, I know I’m wearing business-casual attire, but I have on comfortable shoes and I don’t have another meeting until 3pm so I can handle being a little sweaty for a bit.

So, I did. And I am. Sweaty. Very. Like a slick pig. And it only took me 25 minutes, only FIVE minutes longer than the shuttle. The cool, air conditioned, cushy seated shuttle. Yeah….

Where to start!?

I think a good place to start is that I got a promotion! Whoo hoo. On July 21st I am starting my new position of Manager of IT Operations for a new off-site facility. It is a great opportunity for me to use the skills I’ve acquired over the past 5 years and to learn a whole lot more about everything IT. Its very exciting and I’m doing my share of celebrating.

Tonight I went to the French Quarter Cafe with my co-worker/friend Melissa to see her husband perform. He was really excellent and its a surprisingly cool venue. The stage itself was pretty impressive. I ran into my blogger buddy, Annie Parsons, who was slated to perform after a few more rounds. I thought we would stay long enough to see her, but we ended up heading out before she got ready to play. I really hope I can see her perform soon, since she is totally Nashville-music-scene worthy.

Speaking of Nashville music scene, a friend and I went to a friendly Irish bar in Green Hills as phase II of our night out last night and enjoyed the musical stylings of….some guy who did covers. Sorry, didn’t catch his name. We all sang loudly and threw darts and had a great time. Until one of us slipped in the rain in the parking lot. Yeah…that’s gonna hurt.

OMG, is the mom in “The Suite Life of Zack and Cody” new??? She has the same hairdo, same body structure, but she doesn’t walk the same or have the expressionisms. Yes, expressionisms. And yes, I watch the Disney channel. Hannah Montana is on next.

Speaking of Hannah Montana…oh, I cant. But I’m working on something exciting that may eventually involve her. Hopefully. We’ll see. Night loves.

This week marks the half-way point in my project to fully implement the outpatient clinics on the new electronic surgery scheduling form. It has been a long road to get to here, over 3 years of investigation, development, and trial and error. To sum it up, this process allows clinic schedulers to use one form to request OR time, get their patient’s pre-certed for surgery, and schedule a pre-op evaluation appointment. Previously, it could take up to three forms to complete that process.

Additionally, this means that the OR schedulers, pre-cert staff, and pre-op eval staff now all receive the same form from these clinics, instead of every clinic sending their version of the form in a million different ways. The electronic form has been in development and testing for as long as I can remember, but our EMR is finally able to keep up with the advanced tasks we are asking it to perform.

Anyway, the actual implementation has been a huge accomplishment of mine over the past 4 months, and I hope to be completely finished by the end of summer!

CMS is here!

Today is my first day back from a week long conference in Orlando. It was the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society, a group I’ve heard about for years, but have never had any real contact/experience with them. This year my boss approved me and one other co-worker to attend the 5 day conference and I’m so glad we did.

The conference was made up mostly of hour-long education sessions, complimented by plenty of time to explore the 850+ exhibitors, which was quite amazing. A few of the keynote speakers were Bill Frist, Tennessee’s own former Senate Majority Leader, Steve Case, Chairman and CEO of Revolution Health, Eric Schmidt, Chairman and CEO of Google, and Steven D. Levitt, author of FREAKONOMICS. Quite a good group of speakers. Their content was highly applicable to the current healthcare situation in the US and I learned a lot about where we stand as a country, which was a little frightening.

The education sessions were only an hour long and ranged from topics of EMR to Process Improvement to IT infrastructure. So many were going on at once, we only had the chance to see a fraction of the sessions. I generally picked the ones relating to EMRs and was quickly reminded how different Vanderbilt is as far as EMRs go. Its shocking to find out that there are still large health organizations that are just now starting their EMR adventure. Not to mention the fact that Vanderbilt is one of the very, very few institutions that uses a home-grown system. That made it difficult to relate to a bit of the content, but it was still helpful nonetheless.

On top of the daily activities, we had evening events every night sponsored by different vendors/suppliers, which meant we got to go to SeaWorld, Universal Studios, and some of the best restaurants in the city. It was a good way to meet the companies with whom we work and also get to know other customers.

I could really go into some detail about the conference, but since this is my first day back at work, I should probably save the details for later!

I will just mention that we had a great time in Orlando. The weather was nice the first few days, but then it stormed and got pretty cold for the last two days. We stayed in a nice condo with plenty of room for the two of us and had the freedom of a rental car, which wasn’t used too much but still nice to have. I wish we’d had a little more time for site-seeing, but we were there for work after all!

So I am responsible for ordering a lot of computer equipment for my department and the numerous clinics nearby. Before the holidays I placed an order with ____ for 16 laptops. Upon my return, said laptops had not arrived. When I emailed our account manager, she shows that they were delivered.

Heart stops.

The tracking information from ___ says they were delivered on 12/27 and signed for by “HOLIDAY CLOSED”. Normally that would just make me think that they tried to deliver, saw we were closed, and will attempt later. Except, I had another shipment from the same company that they attempted to deliver while we were closed and the tracking still says “In progress”, denoting the attempts to deliver to our closed office.

So where are my 16 friggin laptops???

This weekend I attended two halloween parties and had a great time. The first was hosted at a gigantic home in Belle Meade and there had to be 200 people there by midnight. I went early to this party and left around 10pm to go to the other party, knowing I would want to return. Anyway, NiT has a link to some pictures. Alas, I am not in any of them, but they do capture some of the controlled craziness that ensued. I actually only knew the host and one other party guest, so I walked around the house countless times looking at costumes and made friendly conversation with some other guests. Open bar + yummy food + lots o people = good times!!

The second party was hosted by one of my Actor’s Bridge friends, Pru, and it was great to see all my theatre buds in their goulish getups. I opted for a nondescript costume combination of a black satin dress, some black wings, and a black halo. I was hence referred to as a “dark angel”. Worked for me.

Last night, although it wasn’t a halloween bash, I participated in a work function at 100 oaks mall. Vanderbilt is going to be moving some clinics and opening up some new ones out there starting next year. This was kind of a pre-party for tenants of 100 oaks as well as lots of employees and donors. I spent the whole night demonstrating some parts of our EMR and socializing with co-workers. Not a bad way to spend a “work night”.

One thing I love about my job is that I make my own schedule/priority list. At any given time, I probably have my pick of 12 things I could be working on. Some of them are just small edits to forms, others are projects that affect the entire clinic.

So it pleases me greatly that I can just say, “I don’t feel like working on this anymore” and move on to something else for the time being. Of course, I think I’ve earned this right because I do generally get things done on or before the requested time frame. But I also realize I’m lucky that I don’t have to clock in and out, or tell someone when I’m going to lunch. In short, I really do love my job.