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AdvancedMD

RoleTechnical Writer
TypeFull-time
PeriodAug 2011 – Mar 2013

Background​

AdvancedMD made healthcare practice management and electronic health record (EHR) software. Patient scheduling, medical billing, ICD-10 coding, insurance claims, clinical documentation. The kind of product where every screen handles data that falls under HIPAA, and the documentation had to be precise enough that medical office staff could use it without calling support every time a claim was denied.

I came in right after ADP acquired the company, which meant the engineering department was scaling fast and the documentation hadn't kept pace. Two development teams, eight developers, two testers, one writer. That writer was me.

This was my first exposure to agile development under SCRUM. At previous employers, developers lived in a different part of the building (or a different building entirely), and information about what they were building filtered through layers of project management before it reached me. At AdvancedMD, I sat with the developers. Daily stand-ups, sprint planning, retrospectives. The information gap that had frustrated me at other companies didn't exist here because I was embedded in the teams producing the software.

I ended up becoming Scrum Master for one of the development teams. That wasn't in the original job description. But when you're already in every meeting and tracking every feature change for documentation purposes, the role is a short step away. I removed impediments, coordinated work between scrum teams, and kept sprints on track while still handling the documentation workload.

The healthcare domain added complexity that pure technology products don't have. The software managed protected health information (PHI), so every feature I documented touched data with regulatory implications. Medical billing codes, insurance claim workflows, patient intake processes. I had to understand both the software behavior and the healthcare context well enough to write documentation that made sense to office managers who thought in terms of patients and claims, not in terms of database fields and API calls.

I earned the company's training certification in the flagship PracticeManager application, which meant I could document features from the perspective of someone who had actually been trained to use the product the way a customer would. Three months into the role, the CEO presented me with the Inspiring Innovation Award. I'm still not entirely sure what I did to earn it, but I kept it.

What I Did​

  • Created technical, training, and help documentation for healthcare practice management (PracticeManager) and electronic health record (EHR) software used by medical practices, covering patient scheduling, medical billing, ICD-10 coding, insurance claims processing, and clinical documentation workflows.
  • Managed documentation needs for two development teams totaling eight developers and two testers, handling the flagship PracticeManager application.
  • Served as Scrum Master for one development team, removing impediments, ensuring group efficiency, and coordinating work between scrum teams.
  • Wrote and edited help files (sample), feature and screen specifications (sample), and release notes (sample) using MadCap Flare and Microsoft FrontPage.
  • Interviewed subject matter experts (SMEs) for details regarding product UI changes, feature enhancements, and bug fixes across healthcare-specific workflows.
  • Led department efforts to migrate the internal documentation specification library to a new storage location.
  • Peer reviewed department documentation for accuracy and consistency in style and tone.
  • Performed UI testing and identified potential bugs during the documentation process, reporting findings to development teams.
  • Presented with Inspiring Innovation Award by CEO, November 2011.
  • Earned Training Certification in AdvancedMD's PracticeManager application, February 2012.

Key Skills​

MadCap Flare · Adobe RoboHelp · Microsoft Word · Specifications · Release Notes · Microsoft FrontPage · Windows · Technical Writing · SCRUM · Scrum Master · Microsoft Office · Enterprise Applications · Practice Management · Electronic Health Records · EHR · ICD-10 · Medical Billing · Healthcare IT · HIPAA · Protected Health Information (PHI) · Source Control · Sprint Planning · Sprint Retrospective · Post-Mortem · Daily Stand-up · Style Guides · User Content · Topic-Based Writing · Editing · Copyediting · Proofreading · Peer Review · Task Management · Collaboration · Adobe Acrobat · Healthcare · SaaS · SDLC · Deliverables · Managing Deadlines · SME Interview · Help Authoring Software · Software Development · Agile · User Guides · Reference Guides · Documentation · UI/UX · HTML · CSS