1

Hello All,

I’m just posting here to ask some advice. I just left a job of 8 years (which I did not like) and went to to start a career in IT by getting a job as a helpdesk tech at a hospital. I am trying to build my resume and eventually become a security auditor or a forensic specialist. However, this job came along and I saw it as an opportunity to get into the feild and make some contacts as well as get some expereince. It is very fast paced and a little overwhelming to be honest. The reason I took the job was to get into IT and start networking and getting expereince. I was just wondering if there were any other Spiceworks users out there that could offer some pointers on starting out and maybe some uniqe advice on how it pertains to the Helathcare IT industry.

Thanks,

Jeff

13 Spice ups
2

I work in a pathology environment, so confidentiality is the key. Otherwise AFAIK its no different than any other industry. IT is IT when you boil it down. On the upside generally users are less clueless than other places I’ve worked.

Try to figure out the HL7 standard if you want somewhere to start. Riveting stuff!

3

Tony,

Thanks for mentioning the Health Level 7. I think you are right and I am defeinately going to ensure that I learn more about it. Thinking about getting the CompTIA Healthcare Technician cert.

4

Just breaking into IT, try for gaining certs towards your goal. A+ and Net+ are helpful in the industry in general. Security+ or MS certs are also good choices. If there is an existing security team in place, that is a great place to try to make friends and get pointers.

5

A good starting point for relevant material is the NIST Computer Security Division site. Here’s the link to the Special Publications: Search | CSRC. I would think the first document to download would be SP 800-66 Rev 1 on the HIPAA Security Rule. In it you will see that it refers to a dozen or so other special pubs, which will keep you busy downloading and reading for some time. :slight_smile:

The CERT site http://www.cert.org/ is another good one for gathering relevant security information.

1 Spice up
6

+! for what Dennis had to say. Nist.gov has a lot of information you might want to look out.

On a personal note and in the environment you’re working in, make sure you get your rest, eat right, and so forth. You’ll be exposed to a few more gernms than you might like. Airborne is a Godsend! Take it every day.

7

Let me throw out one other site that covers more of the healthcare-specific IT issues: http://www.himss.org/ASP/index.asp

8

The HL7 stuff would be a good way to go. There is a shortage of healthcare application interface specialists out there. I know for a fact that all of our vendors are at least 120-180 days out on clinical interfaces that use HL7. All of them would give their …,Well they are looking for good people. Also, with the HITECH Act, there is a demand for network security people because all have to have a security audit every year in order to attest to Meaningful Use.

9

Wow. As always I am always happy to see all the responses to questions that I have asked. I really appreciate ALL of these responses! I knew I could depend on the community for some great pointers. Thanks everyone! I’ll be checking this thread quite frequently because the information and suggestions have been great!

Jeff

10

Thinking of healthcare think of HIPAA, especially if you want to become a security auditor at some point. HIPAA is a tough topic and my colleague recently wrote a summary about HIPAA (taken from Spiceworks discussion). Worth reading I think.

11

Yup. Research any regulations which apply to your industry. Healthcare IT is mostly vanilla administrative IT at the top levels, but if you’re getting up close and personal with PCs in patient wards and surgical theaters, you’ll need to know proper procedures for avoiding biocontamination and so on.

There may also be cause for maintaining enough redundancy throughout the environment that the loss of a single component can’t be the trigger for a five-alarm emergency where you’re troubleshooting against the clock while a patient dies from lack of medical information. Make sure you always have spare equipment, including entire PCs, ready to swap in on a minute’s notice. See if you can automate setups, and get even the automated processes down to seconds instead of hours. Better still if the processes can be eliminated entirely in the first place by careful choice of back-end setup.

As an example of industry-specific setup, most hospitals have automatic backup generators if the power goes off. However, this does not mean that there will always be a smooth power flow inside the buildings. Small UPSes on workstations and chunky ones in server rooms and on major equipment can avoid crucial downtime and information loss in the event of a power failover. Make sure your WiFi receivers and network gear are also battery-backed, and keep a couple of laptops fully charged.

12

I think you’ve already made a start by getting a job in the IT field. Now you just need to take it to the next step and I think the most natural thing to do now is to get a relevant education in the field. If it is healthcare related information technology you’re interested in, I would recommend this program at California College San Diego:

http://www.cc-sd.edu/healthcare/bachelors/health-information-management

As part of this program, you will be required to take IT courses such as Computer Fundamentals, Healthcare Information Security, Databases, etc.

13

Health care IT isn’t much different than any other IT, but it’s great experience to have because health care providers seem to think they’ve got something very different going on, and often ask for health care IT experience. There’s going to be a lot of work in health care related IT in the near and long term future.

You’ve found a good place to start. The job may seem hectic, but that’s because you’re new. After a while it becomes old-hat, and things get much easier.

I’ll mirror some earlier advice, and suggest you cert up. Start with CompTIA A+, Net+, and Sec+. These will apply to most manufacturer certification paths in the future, and make you more marketable when you need to find work (these are often minimum requirements for government and other jobs). Once you’ve completed those, and get some real-world experience, you’ll have a better idea of the path you want to take going forward, and the certifications you’ll need for that path.

Also, HIPAA and HITECH are the relevant standards you’ll want to be familiar with, mostly HITECH. The standards are pretty broad based and, to me at least, pretty obvious. Do your best to stay in compliance, and you’ll never have to worry about it. As long as you’re acting in good faith, you won’t be nailed to a cross so-to-speak.

14

I am leaning that way myself. PACS Admins salary is usually triple what a typical net admin makes and there are tons of jobs out there for it. Just need more radiology experience under my belt.

15

This is true about PACS admins. My wife is in radiology but that still doesn’t give me any expertise in it. If this is a requirement, then I might not be in the running for that type of job but I work with a PACS admin and it sounds interesting as well as the pay.

16

You menioned forensics. Forensics can be extremely hard to get into. You have to have the education, some certs from HTCIA or a like maybe helpfull, but the one factor most organizations will look for is experience in forensics. Yes, seems like a catch 22… How do you get experience if you need experience to get into the field ? My wife used to work for the top 5, well, top 4 now since the big mess a few years back… Her former employer has an impressive forensics team. She worked for her employer for 8 or 9 years and was let go not too long ago, along with hundreds of the other people. Thing is, I don’t want to sound all that negative, but in reality, it may take you so long to get into forensics that at the end you may just loose the interest. You maybe able to get into the field by getting a job for a smaller recovery firm and perhaps get some experience there, get certified and hopefully move into the job that you want at some point in time.

And here is a good one. My wife has a couple of certs from HTCIA, one of them is a Certified Ethical Hacker. Recently she submitted an application for whatever IT position (can’t remember), she was declined because the hiring manager thought that having a person on staff who is a certified ethical hacker is scary… Yep. Gotta love it, never thought that knowledge and certifications are bad …

1 Spice up
17

I found this on youtube and thought it was far too familiar…

Day in life of a PACS Administrator.

18

I feel like I can identify with that video. I know a lot of places PACS admins are desktop support people as well. Or at least fill a lot of those roles because they may be the closest person for things that might be desktop support issues.