William Alexander Email and Phone Number

In the fall of 2011, the CMS conversion (4010 to 5010) wound down and I was moved to QA engineer for the Fair Health project. In this position, I have developed test cases and test script to validate various on-line application programs. The scenarios included creating test data, table updating, extraction from those tables to various flat file formats, and comparing the flat files back to data selected from the Oracle tables. I then worked with the developers to resolve any… Show more In the fall of 2011, the CMS conversion (4010 to 5010) wound down and I was moved to QA engineer for the Fair Health project. In this position, I have developed test cases and test script to validate various on-line application programs. The scenarios included creating test data, table updating, extraction from those tables to various flat file formats, and comparing the flat files back to data selected from the Oracle tables. I then worked with the developers to resolve any defects encountered. During the test processing, I created a rough documentation manual, enumerating step by step how to execute the tests and then how to validate the results. In the case of validating the flat file to extracted data, I defined the flat files as Oracle external tables and then created validation procedures (using Oracle packages) that compared the external tables to the data extracted from the Oracle tables. The results of the comparisons are captured in work tables for review. All testing results and test cases/test scripts are stored in SVN (subversion) as a central repository. Show less

Note - In the summer of 2011, IFMC changed its name to Telligen. Working as an ORACLE DB developer, I am responsible for the Part-B claims data warehouse HIPAA 5010 conversion.I also did the HIPAA 5010 conversion on the Inpatient Standard Analytic Table (ISAT) for the various QIOs.I then converted the Pre-process Analytic Module (PAM) interface to the newly converted Part-B data warehouse.I assisted with various physician feedback reporting packages and modules.

I worked with various claims analysts to extract information from the corporate MS SQL Server database. The inofrmation was extracted and generally loaded into MS Excel spreadsheets for their use. Occasionally, it was necessary to load the data into a temporary MS Access database in order to fully manipulate the information.In certain situations, the information was the same, but for different account numbers. These requests were developed as macro driven spreadsheets that could be… Show more I worked with various claims analysts to extract information from the corporate MS SQL Server database. The inofrmation was extracted and generally loaded into MS Excel spreadsheets for their use. Occasionally, it was necessary to load the data into a temporary MS Access database in order to fully manipulate the information.In certain situations, the information was the same, but for different account numbers. These requests were developed as macro driven spreadsheets that could be turned around in just a few minutes. This ended up saving hours over the former technique that had been used.I also developed several MS Access applications to create form letters. The names and address were gathered from the SQL Server database and the letter text was supplied, on the fly, by the user. The text could be saved as a MS Word template to be re-used later, if necessary.I also discovered that certain existing MS Access applications could be tuned to improve their performance. These enhancements were made available to the analysts that were currently using the existing applications. In some of the MS Access applications, it was necessary to run up to a certain point, switch to another application, and then come back to the original application to continue. And then, finally copy the results into to a MS Excel spreadsheet. The enhanced version of the application had MS Access control all of the transferring between applications and loading the results into MS Excel. This saved time, and sometimes confusion. Other times, a simple modification to the pass-through query to retrieve data from the same server rather than waiting for network traffic improved performance dramatically.All of the request types were documented for use by other analysts (and users, if they felt comfortable enough with the software). Show less

In this position, I worked on numerous contracts ranging from mainframe COBOL to MS Office automated office applications. The contracts were for weeks to years. The hardware platforms included IBM, Honeywell, MS OS PCs, to Apple.The majority of contracts were generally for service industries. Most of which were in the medical and/or insurance industries.Also, the majority of the contracts were staff-extension type contracts. Although, a number of them involved my designing… Show more In this position, I worked on numerous contracts ranging from mainframe COBOL to MS Office automated office applications. The contracts were for weeks to years. The hardware platforms included IBM, Honeywell, MS OS PCs, to Apple.The majority of contracts were generally for service industries. Most of which were in the medical and/or insurance industries.Also, the majority of the contracts were staff-extension type contracts. Although, a number of them involved my designing complete applications/sub-systems. And a few simply required me to analyze an existing application and create documentation for it.The variety of contracts has led to my being very flexible in my ability to work in a large number of environments. Unfortunately, it also means that I do not have the depth of knowledge that someone who has spent 30 years in a single environment might have. But, I enjoy the challenge of the change and can bring to bare the knowledge of alternate techniques to a current problem. This has proven valuable numerous times. Show less

IFMC had recently redesigned a Part-B claims data warehouse for CMS, using ORACLE PL/SQL. The redesign needed to be validated against the design specification. The initial release of the PL/SQL had undergone a nominal amount of unit testing. I reviewed the design documents and compared them to the data warehouse ETL processing. Various queries were written to verify the load process. As testing progressed, a number of procedures were uncovered that were not performing as designed. These… Show more IFMC had recently redesigned a Part-B claims data warehouse for CMS, using ORACLE PL/SQL. The redesign needed to be validated against the design specification. The initial release of the PL/SQL had undergone a nominal amount of unit testing. I reviewed the design documents and compared them to the data warehouse ETL processing. Various queries were written to verify the load process. As testing progressed, a number of procedures were uncovered that were not performing as designed. These procedures were documented and discussed with the developers so that correct processing could be included in the ETL processing packages and then retested. As part of the PQRI bill (the federal government Physicians Quality Reporting Initiative) a number of SAS developers were creating code to calculate the PQRI bonus amounts. The SAS developers extracted test data from the Medicare data warehouse. In certain situations, the amount of ‘good’ test data was very limited. I developed a MS Access application to create test data (Medicare claims) for each of the PQRI measures. The developers could request any number of test claims to be loaded to a test warehouse. The claims were developed by extracting basic claims for certain criteria from the data warehouse and then applying various combinations of ICD-9, CPT I, CPT II, HCPCS codes and various combinations of TIN/NPI (physician ID codes). Finally, as part of the validation process for PQRI, I developed PL/SQL code modules to accumulate and score claim data using the patient care measure criteria for each PQRI measure. In addition, each measure could be tracked for years 2007 through 2009. Each of the years could have their own criteria that may or may not be the same as any other year. Show less

I joined the Sinai Hospital programming department at the beginning of a hardware conversion. When I started, the staff consisted of one person. After a short time, it grew to between 5 and 7 programmers (staff turnover). The programming department was one of four departments that made up the Information Technology function. The others included, business analysis, operations, and data control. Over time, I advanced to programming department manager. At the time, the hardware was… Show more I joined the Sinai Hospital programming department at the beginning of a hardware conversion. When I started, the staff consisted of one person. After a short time, it grew to between 5 and 7 programmers (staff turnover). The programming department was one of four departments that made up the Information Technology function. The others included, business analysis, operations, and data control. Over time, I advanced to programming department manager. At the time, the hardware was mainframe COBOL using flat files. The hospital was moving toward on-line CICS-like screens and DL1 database (precursor to IMS). Show less