Andrea Foster Email Address

Information Technology Project Manager

Covenant Health is a comprehensive, community-owned health system dedicated to improving the health of the people it serves. Established in 1996 by the consolidation of Fort Sanders Health System, Knoxville, Tennessee, and MMC HealthCare System in Oak Ridge, Covenant Health is governed by a voluntary board of directors made up of community leaders and medical professionals. Covenant Health includes nine acute care hospitals in East Tennessee: Methodist Medical Center of Oak Ridge, Fort Sanders Regional Medical Center and Parkwest Medical Center in Knoxville, Fort Loudoun Medical Center in Lenoir City, LeConte Medical Center in Sevierville, Morristown-Hamblen Healthcare System in Morristown, Roane Medical Center in Harriman, Claiborne Medical Center in Tazewell and Cumberland Medical Center in Crossville. It also includes Peninsula Hospital, a psychiatric hospital in East Tennessee's Blount County. Member organizations also include the Patricia Neal Rehabilitation Center, Thompson Cancer Survival Center, Peninsula (a division of Parkwest Medical Center), Fortress Corporation, Fort Sanders West Diagnostic Center, Nanny's, Fort Sanders Health and Fitness Center, Covenant Medical Management, Inc., and Covenant HomeCare and Hospice. Covenant Health also operates the Fort Sanders Nursing Department, a baccalaureate nursing education program at Tennessee Wesleyan College, in Athens, Tennessee. Philanthropic affiliates include Fort Sanders Foundation and the Thompson Cancer Survival Center Foundation in Knoxville, Methodist Medical Center Foundation in Oak Ridge, the Dr. Robert F. Thomas Foundation in Sevierville, and Morristown-Hamblen Foundation in Morristown. Funds raised by the foundations provide services, equipment and other resources for excellence in patient care. More than 10,000 people are employed by Covenant Health and its member organizations. Working together with nearly 1,500 affiliated physicians, these healthcare professionals deliver quality care to thousands of patients throughout East Tennessee.

I started in the IT industry in the mid-90s at TVA. Through my experience as IS coordinator for TVA it sparked an enthusiasm for the telecommunications field. Through a voluntary reduction in force at TVA, I worked for a short period of time in the Credit Department at Bike Athletic, then took a position at Fort Sanders Regional Medical Center as a Work Coordinator for Facility Services. Covenant was created through a merger of Fort Sanders and another local medical center, which started our centralized IT department. An opportunity opened to get back into the IT field as a project coordinator to help coordinate all the activities across the company. Twelve years later, my position has grown to a Project Manager position and busy enough to now need two full time Project Managers. In my experience at Covenant, I have managed projects from small departmental renovations to new technology design and deployments, a SONET ring implementation and two upgrades, one new hospital construction with a second underway and a third pending, two major hospital renovations and expansions with a third pending, several PBX upgrades and replacements, and several new business line developments and mergers. I love challenges, seeing a product take shape and be productive, being apart of teams that result in the satisfaction of a job well done, looking for new ways to improve and change things to make people want to come to work. My passion is using technology or new ideas to improve work flow of staff members, or provides a higher quality diagnosis or treatment for patients, or improves their experience with us. This inturns creates a happier work team and patient, that creates the opportunity for better healthcare. Specialties: design of facilities from conduits in the ground to the end user using the device, project management of telecomm, network, and application services, process improvement design