Consulting Projects

June/1999 to September/1999

Quest Diagnostics
Laboratory and Billing North West Office
Portland, Oregon

Billing System Migration

This project, started in January/99, was to migrate data from Quest's homegrown billing system on an IBM AS/400 to a HP 3000 located at Quest's Denver, CO. office. D.L.C. Consulting (Larry) was brought into the project to fill in for a Quest Programmer on maternity leave at about the 50% complete level with expectations that the entire project be completed by September 1/99. Additional expectations were to support the local Quest Billing, Sales and Management personnel for day to day modifications and reporting.

• AS/400 Configuration
  This AS/400 was connected on a Windows NT network with the local Laboratory Systems and WAN connections to Quest Head Office for Financial Systems.

• Billing System
  Local and regional lab systems, on a daily basis, passed all lab test data and preliminary billing data to the AS/400 via ASCII file uploads. This data was then edited via batch processing and online review by billing clerks to the billing database for final costing and posting to the accounts receivable system. Also, daily transmissions were made to the major clients such as Blue Cross, Washington and Oregon Medicare and several HMO's of billing's for patients lab work. Monthly sales, lab testing statistics and government reports were produced along with transmissions to head office of A/R data for financial reporting. The billing database consisted of approx. 600 externally described files and the A/R database was another 500 files. This billing system processed on average 20,000 lab tests per day every day of the month.

• D.L.C.'s Role
  My role was to learn the processing rules and regulation of the billing system as quickly as possible, assist the one programmer/analyst with as many day to day tasks as possible and write data conversion programs to the specifications set out for sending data to the HP3000. Learning the system sequence and rules was approxomately two weeks(90 hours) of onsite time spent in studying programs, documentation and discussions with the billing staff. Next was about four weeks of programming to amalgamate the data into files the HP3000 could use. The final four weeks were spent testing data on the HP3000 and training the users how to use the new billing system.

• Final Results
  This data migration was designed to incorporate all current data as well as historical data into the new billing system. On Sept. 3/99, all test data was purged from the HP3000 and on Sept. 4/99 all current data was successfully migrated. Over the next week, historical data from the past six years was succssfully migrated with project completion set for Sept. 10/99. In all, approx. 24 GB of AS/400 data was migrated and reloaded to the new billing system.

Jan. 98 - Mar. 98

AS/400 CISC to RISC Migration - Model F45 to 620-2181
$650K project (H/W $490K, S/W $120K, Consult $40K)

Overseeing project, hands-on configurations, set-up operating systems, and tested. Ensured all software migrated and compiled on new system.
Hired a consulting firm to assist in the set-up of new machines and migration of data files.
Learned the IBM migration Steps - followed them through. Made final cut over in one day.
Came in on budget and on time.

Nov. 97 - Apr. 99

Y2K Compliance Analysis and Testing - $3.1M Project

Working as a member of the Y2K team to bring all Information Systems, Physical Plants, Medical Equipment and Telephone Systems to Y2K compliance for three Mental Health Hospitals and 68 Mental Health Clinics.
Managed the installation of 237 new PC's at Alberta Hospital Ponoka to replace all non Y2K compliant machines. All new PC's were ordered with Windows NT 4.0 workstation and Microsoft Office 97 Professional to replace Windows for Workgroups 3.11 and Wordperfect 6.1, MS Excel 5.0 office systems.
These new PC's were all installed and operational between July 1 and Aug. 15/98.
Y2K Project completion is scheduled for Sept. 1999 and is on budget.

Feb 96 - Ongoing

Established D.L.C. Internet Services as an ISP in the Ponoka - Red Deer Alberta area.

Provide internet access to about 125 residential, rural and commercial customers.
Provide in-home setup and training for internet customers.
Developed internet access through two different downstream providers, several Telcos and equipment providers, negotiated contracts and setup WAN access.
Develop Web Sites and personal web pages for customers.

Sept. 92 - Dec. 93

Information Systems Upgrade - Hardware and Software - $1.1 million

Contracted with a consulting firm to develop Strategic Plan for the upgrade of all Financial and Patient Care Systems. Worked with consultant to develop a hospital wide strategic plan to move from S36 to a new financial system.
Laid out three different vendors to be evaluated.
Co-ordinated the entire evaluation process - introducing vendors and arranged for user groups to evaluate products and arranging tours to view the systems in operation.
Selected Infinium Software on an IBM AS/400 for the financial systems. Patient Care Systems evaluated did not meet criteria so in-house development selected.
Contracted with IBM for delivery and installation of new system. Contracted with Infinium Software for installation and training. Arranged all user acceptance testing and migration of System 36 data to new software.
Went live with General Ledger, Accounts Payable, Payroll, H/R, and Fixed Assets December 1993. System 36 Materials Management System was re-written in native RPG 400 and integrated with the Infinium Sotware Package.
This project also included expanding our LAN from 25 PC's to 140 PC's hospital wide and designing the network of hubs and routers to communicate over a campus style facility with a combination of fiber optics and Cat 5 cabling.
Project was brought in on budget and on-time.