POSITION TITLE: EHR Site Specialist
REPORTS TO: Director of Quality and Process Improvement
FLSA Status: Exempt
Date: January 2024
Organizational Overview:
Manet Community Health Center serves the broad health needs of patients and residents across our service areas by delivering high quality, individualized, culturally sensitive primary care, behavioral health and supportive services for families and individuals of all ages. The health center is a federally qualified community health center (FQHC), fully licensed by the Department of Public Health, accredited by The Joint Commission, recognized by the National Committee for Health Assurance (NCQA) as a Patient-Centered Medical Home, and certified for Diabetes Self-Management Education and Support. A multi-site community-based health center, Manet ensures that our patients have unfettered access to all levels of the health care system and is especially committed to providing services for the medically underserved. Manet has three locations in Quincy, and one each in Hull, Taunton and Attleboro, Massachusetts – with two new sites opening in 2023: a school-based health center in Taunton and a clinic within a Housing Resource Center in Quincy for homeless and housing insecure individuals. Manet is committed to providing community leadership and collaboration to improve health outcomes for the residents and communities we serve.
General Definition and Scope of Job
The EHR Site Specialist will be responsible for the design coordination, development, and implementation of applications. EHR Site Specialist is the key interface between clinical, operations and the Information Technology (IT) department. The EHR Site Specialist is responsible for identifying, defining, reporting, analyzing, form development, troubleshooting application issues, prioritizing, and refining business requirements. The EHR Site Specialist supports the EHR, provides onsite and phone support and guidance to users and the IT help desk. This individual will also be responsible for monitoring newly released functionality and identifying key changes that will impact the organization and work with the Onboarding Technical Trainer to disseminate information to appropriate staff. This position serves as the key point of contact with Athena software vendors, advocating for Manet’s needs and monitoring ongoing vendor support response. This position must understand business requirements as well as logical and physical data models in order to build high quality standard reports. The EHR Site Specialist should be able to propose solutions with the scope of the existing operating systems, clinical processes and workflows as well as assess business value of those solutions.
Core Responsibilities
- Provide Support
- Provides daily support to end users through troubleshooting and coaching
- Identifies, assesses, and resolves application and equipment issues as they occur
- Maintains system setup such as creating new users in Athena
- Monitors CSC tickets to ensure issues are resolved
- Identifies complex problems, their probable causes, their impact on operations, report them to the appropriate parties, offer possible solutions, while exhibiting judgment and realistic understanding of issues; able to independently and/or collaboratively bring problems to complete resolution
- Analysis and Reporting
- Workflow analysis, design, and development of clinical solutions including customized encounter forms, and custom clinical lists.
- Collaborates with key business users to ensure business requirements and report specifications are documented accurately and completely
- Confers with all levels of the health center to analyze how existing operating systems may be improved or develop plans for a new system or workflow
- Develops, tests, and deploys standard reports and dashboards based on business requirements
- Development
- Maintains and prioritizes backlog of requested enhancements and new reports originating from both stakeholders and in support of IT infrastructure
- Authors functional requirements documents for new features, enhancements or fixes and ensure that stakeholders needs are met
- Coordinates the development of system or manual workarounds in the various departments
- Enhances, tests, and implements new application features
- Presents solutions to management for approval and document issue resolution.
- Develops customer relationships and integrates activities with other teams to ensure successful implementation and support of project efforts.
- Analyzes, articulates, and documents current state workflows, business requirements, and barriers to optimizing patient safety, patient experience, resource efficiency, and revenue capture.
- Demonstrates ability to facilitate workflow redesign; documents workflow changes, identifies impacts on software configuration, collaborates with appropriate staff to change software configuration.
- May facilitate clinical content or workflow change management sessions with staff, leaders, and providers; documents outcomes of sessions and follows those changes through to completion.
- Maintains current knowledge of operational policies, procedures, workflows, and relevant regulatory standards.
- Maintains proficiency in software functionality and use.
- Acts as a change agent in support of organizational goals.
- Training
- Reviews athenahealth release notes and create a documentation for clinical and non-clinical staff with the Onboarding Technical Trainer
- Delivers training in both formal classroom and informal individual settings
- Other Expectations of Site Specialist
- Attends appropriate clinic department meetings as the EHR expert
- Attends bi-weekly development meetings
- Participates in weekly department meetings
- Performs other duties as assigned or required
Minimum Skills, Experience and Educational Requirements
- Associates degree required, Bachelors preferred or 5-7 years equivalent experience
- General knowledge of clinical operations, policies, procedures and workflow
- Excellent organizational skills to effectively manage day-to-day project and operational tasks; establish priorities and is flexible to accommodate changes in priorities to reflect the needs of the work environment.
- Ability to identify system constraints or gaps in business requirements and effectively communicate issues/risks to stakeholder and project team in a timely manner
- Required EHR experience
- Experience with athenahealth preferred
- Ability to understand Electronic Health Record software use and workflows and how those relate to data definitions and reporting
- Flexible, adaptable and resourceful, with a willingness and ability to self-teach and learn quickly
- Ability to design and build systems to solve complicated inter-related processes.
- Excellent verbal and written communication skills.
- Ability to cooperatively work with people from all organizational levels contributing to the success of the team by collaborating in group activity, prioritization and decision making
- Maintain a professional demeanor especially under stressful circumstances
- Experience with Power BI
- Must have a valid driver’s license and clean driving record with reliable transportation
Critical Demands of the Job
- Manage multiple requests and prioritize appropriately.
- Ability to function in a fast-paced setting with a variety of patients and staff.
- Attention to details and prompt follow-up.
- Includes walking and standing for long periods, sitting for short periods, hand dexterity, clear hearing and speaking ability. Must be able to lift a maximum of 1/3 of their body weight.
- Excellent organizational and interpersonal skills.
Working Conditions
- Works in well-lighted environment with comfortable surroundings.
- Stressful at times due to competing demands, including attention to multiple patients and staff.
Required Availability
May be required to work a rotating schedule, as the department requires. This includes evenings, holidays and weekends.