At HCA in Nashville, IT staffers shadow physicians, nurses and technicians so they understand the real-life impact of their work.
At Lehigh Valley Health Network in Allentown, Pa., tech workers are encouraged to develop expertise in particular technologies, but they also can pursue new ideas, even those involving technologies outside their expertise.
The two were among 15 healthcare systems named in Computerworld's "100 Best Places to Work in IT." The list was drawn from 375 organizations nominated. All were required to have at least 50 IT employees and at least 300 employees overall. The magazine looked at factors such as average salary and bonus increases, diversity in management positions, training opportunities and turnover rates. It also surveyed a sample of each organization's IT workers on factors such as job satisfaction and work/life balance.
The health organizations making the list:
- Lehigh Valley Health Network in Allentown, Pa. (No. 7)
- Cedars-Sinai Health System in Los Angeles (No. 13)
- Kaiser Permanente in Oakland, Calif. (No. 18)
- Palmetto Health in Columbia, S.C. (No. 19)
- HCA in Nashville (No. 25)
- OhioHealth in Columbus (No. 35)
- Ascension Health in St. Louis, Mo. (No. 55)
- Norton Healthcare in Louisville, Ky. (No. 56)
- Johns Hopkins Medicine in Baltimore (No. 57)
- Miami Children's Hospital in Miami (No. 63)
- Cancer Treatment Centers of America in Schaumburg, Ill. (No. 64)
- H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa, Fla. (No. 68)
- Partners HealthCare System in Boston (No. 73)
- Carolinas HealthCare System in Charlotte, N.C. (No. 89)
- Intermountain Healthcare in Salt Lake City (No. 91)
IT jobs in healthcare organizations offer many of the factors shown to be important to tech workers--including the opportunity to work on new challenges and the ability to make a difference.
Health organizations also can be attuned to workers' desire to continually upgrade their skills and to have a life outside of work.
At Cancer Treatment Centers of America Inc., in Schaumburg, Ill., IT workers deal with VoIP, virtualization, private clouds, telemedicine, EHRs and mobility software designed to improve patient care and safety. More than 1,000 courses are offered through a corporate university and company provides full tuition reimbursement for college degrees.
Johns Hopkins Medicine in Baltimore goes further, offering dependent children half off on undergraduate tuition for workers with two years of service.
Miami Children's Hospital (No. 63 overall) also ranked No. 5 for diversity and No. 8 for benefits. Its tech staff recently implemented 13 clinical software systems using a single integrated EHR platform in just over 15 months.
To learn more:
- check out the list (Click on each name to read more about that organization's IT efforts.)