Meet: Jacquelyn Birr, Business Analyst on the Applications, Integration and Development (AID) Team.
It’s been said by author Neil Gaiman, if you need information, “Google can bring you back 100,000 answers; a librarian can bring you back the right one.”
TransForm’s Jacquelyn Birr, Business Analyst on the Applications, Integration and Development (AID) team, holds a Masters of Library and Information Science and uses her skills every day to help her team support information management at our member hospitals. We had the chance, recently, to talk with Jacquelyn about what that support looks like.
Birr joined TransForm in 2019 when she was hired as a Project Assistant for the e-VOLVE project on the Emergency Department work stream. Shortly after, she transitioned to the role of Testing Coordinator where she organized and oversaw the integrated testing of the Cerner system. She was permanently hired as a Business Analyst for TransForm in April, 2021.
A usual day for Birr is full of everything Data Quality Systems (DQS) which centers on supporting the Health Records Management area of Cerner Millennium and all aspects of hospital patient registration. This includes resolving tickets related to registration, health records, and report distribution as well as completing regional build changes in these areas.
“I am co-chair of the DQS regional team where we discuss issues, optimizations and process questions that impact all the hospitals on Cerner Millennium. Outside of daily operational support, I am heavily involved in domain validation and upgrade activities in the DQS space and I have been lucky to be involved in other smaller projects, including the Shelter Health Network proposal development, Printing working group, Regional Functional Teams working group and most recently the Cerner Onboarding Framework project that just kicked off,” Birr explained.
The analyst joked that she loathes printers, but somehow has become somewhat of an expert on printing in Cerner Millennium, which explains her role on the Printing working group.
With that many responsibilities, Birr said organizing her time and determining priorities among the large number of tasks on her ‘to-do’ list is probably the biggest challenge.
“Some weeks are easier than others, and there are definitely times where the number of competing priorities can feel a little overwhelming, but it’s definitely something I have become used to with my experience working in this type of environment,” Birr noted. “I keep track of my ‘to-do’ items using a matrix organized from low impact/low effort (fill-in tasks) to high impact/high effort (projects) in an attempt to best organize my time.”
She added every item on her to-do list is triaged to determine how quick the response is required and then assessed for impact/effort. She also tries to maintain open communication with fellow team members and hospital partners on progress/updates so that changes in priority can be determined earlier rather than later.
Despite the workload, the analyst said she loves the challenge associated with figuring out the complex issues that come to the DQS group. Registration is the area of Cerner Millennium ‘first contact’ for most hospital visits and Birr said any issues that arise there have a downstream effect. Health Records, on the opposite side, is at the end of the process and is impacted by all workflows completed from registration through the clinical space.
“This means that investigations into Health Records related issues require looking into multiple processes to determine if there is a system issue or a workflow issue as the root cause. It also gives me the opportunity to work closely with many others in the AID team that specialize in the clinical areas. Investigating these issues often involves cross-referencing data across multiple Cerner applications and downstream systems, and often writing queries to pull data on a visit to determine the problem. It can be a real challenge, but I love the troubleshooting process and the feeling of accomplishment when an issue is resolved,” Birr explained.
Her previous work experience translated well to her current role at TransForm.
“My interest has always been in the use of technology on the information management side of things. I spent six years working in the Legal Clinic System on a technology project aimed at developing tools to collect client information (interactive interviews) and training staff for the implementation of a provincial client information system in the Legal Clinic System,” Birr noted.
A big plus for Birr working at TransForm is that the schedule flexibility allows her to keep a good work/life balance and spend time with her husband, Mike and kids, Liam and Marceline.
“I consider myself very lucky to have this! I have two small kids, 6 and 8 at home, so most of my time outside of work is spent being a mom and all the fun (and work) that comes with that,” she said.
When it comes to activities/hobbies, Birr is a very creative person and enjoys painting, crochet, and finding more DIY projects than she have time for, including Halloween costumes for her kids. She is also an avid reader of contemporary romance and fantasy fiction and while she wouldn’t call herself a ‘gamer’, she does enjoy playing MMORPGs (massively multiplayer online role-playing games) with her husband.
