I have a friend who is a GP and partner in a medical centre. I dropped in to visit him once, and it was a real eye-opener as an IT person. Their IT was a shambles. The four senior Doctors have a share in the business and hire every other employee. They all had their own computers / not purchased through a central procurement point. The center itself had computers and a records system, but it was super basic in terms of what a real IT department would set up. Just PCs plugged into a central switch and a single server running whatever software the business runs on. It was a small business, basically. Security was not up to scratch (no firewall at all for internal traffic/ just the consumer grade router NATing external traffic). Email was just hosted with Microsoft 365 with an off-the-shelf config. Fax was literally the phone line plugged into the receptionists printer.
I assume they were great at the doctory bits. But their IT was amateur hour.
I should state that the patient records stuff was via some sort of cloud-based SaaS company accessed through a browser. No medical records were kept onsite.
have provided support for medical industry in the past. This is so accurate. Even when they did purchase a solution they’d hang onto it YEAR beyond what it was originally scoped for and still expect it to run like new.
Dumbest profession i ever supported TBH.
There are dumber. I supported an alliance of car yards. Those were the dumbest profession I ever supported. Managers who somehow failed upward into their roles and were dumber than a box a of hammers. Mechanics who had (and needed) Windows XP in the workshop. Car salespeople who would ignore everything in their email that wasn’t “I want to buy a car”, even if the message was as bold as possible “If you don’t click this button by x time your email will not work on Monday”. Guess how mad they were at me on Monday? 🙄
Yup, their communication leaves a lot to be desired.
I’m kind of disappointed that my GP doesn’t have a follow up system themselves to ensure things are received.
Seems to be sorted now, but very frustrating.
I have a friend who is a GP and partner in a medical centre. I dropped in to visit him once, and it was a real eye-opener as an IT person. Their IT was a shambles. The four senior Doctors have a share in the business and hire every other employee. They all had their own computers / not purchased through a central procurement point. The center itself had computers and a records system, but it was super basic in terms of what a real IT department would set up. Just PCs plugged into a central switch and a single server running whatever software the business runs on. It was a small business, basically. Security was not up to scratch (no firewall at all for internal traffic/ just the consumer grade router NATing external traffic). Email was just hosted with Microsoft 365 with an off-the-shelf config. Fax was literally the phone line plugged into the receptionists printer.
I assume they were great at the doctory bits. But their IT was amateur hour.
That’s a real worry where sensitive medical data is concerned, and I have the feeling they’re not the only clinic like that
I should state that the patient records stuff was via some sort of cloud-based SaaS company accessed through a browser. No medical records were kept onsite.
have provided support for medical industry in the past. This is so accurate. Even when they did purchase a solution they’d hang onto it YEAR beyond what it was originally scoped for and still expect it to run like new. Dumbest profession i ever supported TBH.
There are dumber. I supported an alliance of car yards. Those were the dumbest profession I ever supported. Managers who somehow failed upward into their roles and were dumber than a box a of hammers. Mechanics who had (and needed) Windows XP in the workshop. Car salespeople who would ignore everything in their email that wasn’t “I want to buy a car”, even if the message was as bold as possible “If you don’t click this button by x time your email will not work on Monday”. Guess how mad they were at me on Monday? 🙄