Pros
NOTE: The current CEO (Ferranti) is not known to me in terms of effectiveness, all my comments here reference his predecessors. If your laziness and incompetence far outweighs your desire to do a good job, then this is a job you can do nothing at for a long time. For a very long time I thought I could make a difference and there were many carrots dangled in front of me, but none of those ever materialized and I was forced to become part of the solution (by leaving) rather than being part of the problem (and enabling further foolishness). The cost of living in North Carolina is cheap, that is a definite pro and it will help since the salary level offered by DHTS is far below the average for the work they require, even amongst other healthcare institutions. Want to make more? Leave and come back, you can greatly increase your salary. The healthcare delivered by Duke Medicine is TOP NOTCH, and the healthcare plans for employees are TOP NOTCH. That alone was part of why I stayed so long. They really do have some excellent healthcare professionals. The IT big picture is about centralization and trying to recover from the IT silos created during the 90s. Slowly but surely that seems to be coming to fruition.
Cons
NOTE: The current CEO (Ferranti) is not known to me in terms of effectiveness, all my comments here reference his predecessors. If your desire to do a good job far outweighs your laziness and incompetence, then this is a job you with find to be massively frustrating and likely a waste of time. For such a high profile teaching institution providing world class healthcare, their IT infrastructure and management is mind-bogglingly ineffective and incompetent. Poor pay in comparison with similar jobs titles. Poor/weak leadership. Terrible communications. Terrible collaboration and relationships between interior DHTS groups. Ineffective management, more concerned with backstabbing anyone who stands between them and the limelight, than managing employees and information. Deadweight employees that somehow retain their positions year after year. HORRIBLE customer service. IT's job is to deliver customer service, and they do it badly. DHTS was created when it's predecessor, MCIS, dissolved. The name change was effectively a way to abandon MCIS's terrible reputation, much like a corporation renaming itself to get away from 'that incident'. Unfortunately, almost all of the same people who were in MCIS are still languishing away in DHTS, some having risen in the ranks to positions of 'power'. How many annual work culture surveys have come back negative? At least every year for the last 5+ years. How has management tried to make changes to address these issues? By creating committees filled with the very people who are the source of employee's ire. What have these committees provided as solutions? Empty promises with hopes that the collective memory & attention span of employees is short.
