Three ways to work with me
There are three ways to work with me, and each one comes with a written scope you can read in full before you sign anything. The scope includes a list of what it doesn’t cover, so you know where the edges are from the start.
Technology and AI readiness assessment
Two to three weeks, at a fixed fee agreed before I start. You’ll receive four documents and a sixty-minute readout with your leadership team, and everything I produce is yours to keep.
| Item | What it covers | Timing |
|---|---|---|
| Systems and data-flow map | What talks to what, and where patient data really lives, which isn’t always where the diagram says it does | Week 1 |
| AI tool inventory | Every AI tool in use, including the ones bought on a personal card and never reviewed | Week 1 |
| Vendor and contract review | Which vendors have signed a business associate agreement and which haven’t, who else they pass your data to, where it’s stored, and whether their terms let them train AI on it | Week 2 |
| Gap analysis | Where your setup falls short of what the HIPAA Security Rule expects and, for substance-use treatment records, what 42 CFR Part 2 (the federal rule for those records) requires. The findings point to questions for counsel rather than a compliance opinion | Week 2 |
| Priced remediation roadmap | Twelve months of work ranked by clinical impact, each item priced separately so you can decline any line without renegotiating | Week 2 to 3 |
| Leadership readout | Sixty minutes with your decision-makers, walking the findings and the roadmap | Week 3 |
- Fee basis
- Fixed fee
- Duration
- Two to three weeks
- Fee
- $5,500
Implementation engagement
Implementation is scoped from the assessment roadmap, so you’re paying for work you’ve already read the case for. The fee is fixed and paid in milestones, each tied to finished work rather than to a date on the calendar.
| Item | What it covers | Timing |
|---|---|---|
| Integration work | Connecting systems that were never designed to work together, with automatic retries, an alert when something fails, and regular checks that both systems agree | Scoped per SOW |
| Migration and vendor exit | Moving off a system that has you locked in, to one you control and can document | Scoped per SOW |
| Reporting and analytics | Getting your own numbers out of your own systems, on a schedule you control | Scoped per SOW |
| Documentation as a milestone | A written record the next person can pick up without calling me. Nothing counts as delivered until it’s written down | Every SOW |
| Written status every Friday | What got done, what’s next, and what’s at risk. If a milestone is going to slip, you’ll hear it from me within two business days of my knowing | Every week |
- Fee basis
- Fixed fee, milestone-based
- Duration
- Scoped per statement of work
- Fee
- Up to about $60,000
Advisory retainer
The retainer covers the questions that come up between projects. When a renewal lands or a vendor pitches something new, you can call someone who already knows your systems, so you get a useful answer without paying for three weeks of catching up.
| Item | What it covers | Timing |
|---|---|---|
| Defined monthly scope | Agreed in writing each month, so the arrangement never quietly becomes open-ended | Included |
| Vendor and contract questions | Renewals, new tools and integration proposals reviewed before you sign, not after | Included |
| Systems map upkeep | The map is re-verified and re-issued as your systems change | Included |
| Questions for counsel | I identify which decisions need a lawyer, and what to ask them | Included |
| Not included | Implementation work, which is quoted separately. Incident response, outage support and after-hours on-call are not services I offer | Excluded |
- Fee basis
- Monthly, defined scope
- Duration
- Month to month
- Fee
- By scope
How every engagement is structured
The same terms apply to every engagement. They’re written to prevent the two complaints I hear most about consultants in this sector: a bill that kept growing, and a person who went quiet.
- Fixed fee, quoted in writing before any work starts.
- Milestone payments tied to delivered work, never to dates.
- An explicit out-of-scope list in every statement of work.
- Changes go through a written change order, priced before I start.
- A written status update every Friday.
- Every document I produce is yours to keep.
- Liability capped at fees paid, with a separate cap for data incidents.
- I do the work. Subcontractors are rare, and bound to the same obligations I hold.
Why milestones, and why a Friday email
When I asked a front-office manager what it would have taken to keep trusting a vendor who’d let the clinic down, this was the answer:
“If we can get to stage one, then that’s the first check. Then stage two. Always got to have feedback, otherwise you don’t know where things are.”
What has to be signed before I see anything
Before I see any of your systems, four things have to be in place, in this order. They apply to every engagement, however small or urgent.
Mutual nondisclosure agreement first
A mutual nondisclosure agreement precedes any systems walkthrough.
No patient data before a business associate agreement
I take no patient data or access to a system holding it before an executed business associate agreement. Any demonstration before that runs on de-identified or test data.
Minimum necessary access only
I get only the access the scoped work needs, and it ends when the work does.
Heightened handling for substance-use records
Records covered by 42 CFR Part 2, the federal rule for substance-use treatment records, are identified by you and handled under a qualified service organization agreement, the Part 2 counterpart to a business associate agreement.
I do not make compliance determinations