Liz directs and oversees all aspects of her assigned projects ensuring compliance with registry standards and specifications. She ensures the goals and objectives of each project are met through oversight of her data abstraction teams.
Prior to joining Registry Partners, Liz worked as a Clinical Data Analyst for UnityPoint Health in Des Moines, IA; has served as a Pediatric Intensive Care Unit Nurse for Mercy Medical Center in Des Moines, IA and worked as an Emergency Department Nurse for St. Luke’s Hospital in Cedar Rapids, IA.
Liz earned her Bachelor of Science in Nursing from Mount Mercy College in Cedar Rapids, IA. She is a Registered Nurse (RN) and certified as a Surgical Clinical Reviewer (SCR) through the American College of Surgeons, National Surgical Quality Improvement Program.
Liz resides in Iowa with her husband, three children and two dogs. In her spare time, she enjoys spending time with her children, homeschooling, reading period-pieces, and serving her church.
Q & A with Liz:
Q: What tips can you provide a clinical data abstractor that may help them improve their abstraction skills and become more efficient?
A: After I have trained on a new registry or a new EMR system, I utilize a roadmap/guide of moving through the chart in the most efficient manner to capture all the variables. This allows me to develop a flow that soon becomes automatic but also gives me peace of mind that I won’t miss anything in my abstraction. This also allows me to pick up where I left off in a chart, confident that the previous steps have already been done. This method can be applied to and adapted for similar EMR systems and registries when I start a new project.
Q: What advice can you give others who may be considering a remote position outside the clinical setting?
A: Working remotely has provided me with an opportunity to stay in the workforce that I might not otherwise have, especially as a nurse. It may seem daunting to manage your workflow from home, but the flexibility and autonomy that it provides is a refreshing alternative to the typical work week. With a little diligence and personal accountability, you soon develop a system to complete your commitments in a timely, efficient manner. Recently I started using Google calendar to schedule my weekly work hours in addition to my other commitments. This allows me a map of how I will meet my hours committed for the week without feeling overwhelmed. I’ve been working from home in various capacities for about seven years now and it is hard for me to imagine working any other way!
Q: With so many career options in the healthcare industry, why did you choose a career focused on data collection and clinical outcomes?
A: I think that as bedside nurses we have great opportunities to make a personal impact, patient by patient, and that is so important to the patient experience. However, in the role of data collection and analytics we are able to have a broader impact on the patient populations as a whole. The role of data in monitoring clinical outcomes and making quality improvements is only growing and it is an exciting career field to be in. I love that data gives clinicians the information that they need to take an accurate look at how their patients are doing and to confidently make changes. It eliminates so much of the guess work in evaluating the clinical outcomes of our patient populations and it’s driving force is improving the actual care that is delivered.