Between the Lines (BL) recently met up with Drew Abas (DA), a team lead over the Midwest Business Documentation Team of Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield.

BL: Thank you, Drew for taking the time to meet with us. Could you give us a brief description of your work?

DA: I manage a team and corporate intranet site, which are responsible for documenting core business procedures (claims processing, customer service, group, member and billing operations) performed on our company's suite of healthcare insurance management software applications. We currently have approximately 940 operations procedures online plus ~225 related job aids on our web site.

BL: What is your typical role in teams? What responsibilities does a team lead have at your organization?

DA: A typical Anthem team lead is responsible for ensuring that work is being assigned and completed in the most efficient manner possible. My particular position, which is a fairly unique one in the company, allows me some latitude to pursue new internal processes to improve our efficiency while other leads in more structured environments such as in production shops (i.e. claims, customer service and group/member) do not. One thing I do not do is conduct associate human resource business such as payroll, performance evaluations (although I do provide input), and vacation scheduling.

As team lead, I ensure that my team is assigned as a resource to all projects that impact our online documentation. These projects are quite numerous and complex requiring much initial impact analysis before we can even begin researching the low-level details, which will prompt us to perform the actual procedure revisions. I also track teamwork metrics and ensure the team, in addition to these projects, is meeting our operations customers' needs for procedure revisions and enhancements.

BL: Have you always worked in the healthcare industry?

DA: I originally graduated from Wittenberg University (class of 1985) with a degree in English, but beyond that, I had no idea what to do with myself vocationally speaking. So, I did what all English majors do: waited tables for a few years. Eventually, I found myself as a clerk at Children's Hospital Medical Center in Cincinnati. This position exposed me to nursing as a profession. In 1991, I received my associate's degree in nursing. I've been in the healthcare arena ever since. I've been a medical-surgical, ER and traveling nurse (all pediatrics), as well as a flight nurse for the United States Air Force Reserve, flying out of Wright-Patterson AFB.

When I decided to take a break from civilian nursing, my military reserve career, by regulation, had to come to a regrettable end, as well. For a year, I was a department manager at a Barnes and Noble bookstore until it became readily apparent that retail is retail no matter how interesting the product - the pay was abysmal). I returned to nursing as a case manager for Anthem for a year. I then transferred to a software project within Anthem whose objective was to consolidate all core business operations on to one software system. I've been with this effort ever since.

BL: What made you choose to work for Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield?

DA: Essentially, happenstance. As I noted above, I needed to get out of retail bookselling. Anthem, a nearby employer, had the right job at the right time. For a nurse, working weekdays, 9-5, no nights, no holidays, no weekends, is a dream job!

 

 

  

 

BL: How big is your team, and do any report to you directly?

DA: My team is currently six associates including myself. They report to me with respect to communicating to me what they are working on, any difficulties they are experiencing, workload issues and the like. My manager depends on me to have a complete understanding of what the team is doing and I report that to him. All HR-related issues for my team members, however, are worked by my manager. Though we are responsible for documenting all Midwest business on our software suite, the same suite is to be rolled out in our West region. So, we are now forming a 'virtual' team with our counterparts in the West even though we have no formal reporting structure with them.

BL: Do you wear multiple-hats in your organization?

DA: Somewhat. While I am a team lead over people, I am also responsible for maintaining our website. I also designed this website from the ground up as this was the first time Anthem elected to deliver its entire core operating procedures in electronic, web-based format. For this website, I've integrated MS FrontPage, RoboHelp, and a documentation application called ProcedureWRITE (soon to be converted to its successor application, Zavanta) by Comprose, Inc.

Except for some 'bells 'n whistles' generated by RoboHelp, my site delivers simple static HTML documents. As you can tell from my background, I am not a software/IT type and it would take much training to get up to the cutting edge of web-based documentation vis-a-vis employing XML, DHTML, SML and the like. I'm not really sure I understand what these languages are all about, nor how tech. writers use them. So, this simple though large site is quite manageable by someone with my background with just a little additional training in basic web authoring.

BL: What do you enjoy most about being a leader? Least?

DA: Being a leader gives me the opportunity to lift my head above the fray and take a wider more strategic view of what my team is doing. My team has been in existence for 1-½ years now, and I literally have led it into new ways of accomplishing its objectives by use of technology and continue to do so. My least favorite task is managing the personality conflicts that arise. Because I so dislike it, I am admittedly not very good at it - room for improvement there.

BL: What motivates you with your work?

DA: Above and beyond any work-related motivation is providing for my family. I am the very proud father of two girls who we adopted from China. When work ever gets me down, I always return to the reason why I am here. Beyond that, I appear to have an aptitude for picking apart software applications and making them work for my team's objectives. For instance, our tracking tool is Rational's ClearQuest. For some that know, it really is meant to track and manage software development. Though Anthem uses it to do so for modifications to our suite of healthcare management applications, I've used it to design an 'editorial process' that mimics the enhancements ('work tickets') for these software modifications.

BL: How did you break into this field?

DA: My first manager for my current position hired me five years ago, I believe, because I had some formal education with regard to writing (i.e. my English degree) and obviously had experience in the healthcare industry. These items plus a demonstrated interest and aptitude to learn the needed basic 'tools of the trade' (i.e. web authoring tools) secured the position for me. At the time, I had little understanding of the true niche industry that is technical writing.

Now that I understand what it is all about and that there are qualified, trained professional technical writers out there, if I was my manager back then, I wouldn't have hired somebody like me. I would've hired someone with a degree or certification in technical writing who knew the tools of the trade required to get the job done and could immediately apply them. There was a lot of 'start-up frustration' as we re-invented the wheel of online documentation.

BL: What does your typical day on the job consist of?

DA: My days can be quite varied. Sometimes I find myself monitoring and managing work requests in our tracking tool most of the day. I also participate as do team members on projects. Though I've recently delegated some of the actual daily web publishing duties, I still have a hand in that at times.

Anthem is big on project management and I often find myself collecting and integrating data to report to project managers, the most notorious -- in my mind at least--of which is work estimates. That is a maddening task that I dread - too many unknowns at the time the work estimates are due.

BL: How has your education helped prepare you for this career?

DA: Though I never took any true technical writing courses, I do see my English degree as providing me with attention to detail for the written word -probably much to the annoyance of my co-workers. Though I try to pick my battles, I find, more and more, that good written communication is sorely lacking in the business world today, especially when varying degrees of formality are required.

Thank you, Drew. It has been a pleasure interviewing you. You have given us an excellent view of what it is like working in the healthcare industry, as well as being a leader and playing such an important role a large enterprise.