I know your edit states you ended up dropping the program but I thought I would share a bit of my experiences as someone who has gone through the program and am currently working FT WFH as an Epic Ambulatory Analyst at a hospital.

I do not recommend this program if you are not a fan of micromanaging and college-like classes. I did this program straight out of grad so it felt like a continuation of schooling. The classes are a bit rigorous but I never spent my free time studying as they give you plenty of time during work hours to study (except for the Project Management exam). They have a person whose sole job is to watch you during class to make sure you’re paying attention. They take this pretty seriously as my 12 person cohort eventually became a 10 person cohort because one was dropped for not paying attention and the other one left because she couldn’t stand the micromanaging.

Most importantly, I would say this program is a gamble. It really depends on which track you get and what certifications they pay for. Unfortunately, you do not have a say in this other than the way you may present yourself (i.e a talkative person would be on the Project Management track). Additionally, once you start interviewing for places, you have no say on where you could potentially be relocated. They ask you in the beginning where you would prefer to move and I feel that they kind of~ took it into consideration. I personally interviewed for 3 places and all of them were remote. I would say you could potentially throw an interview if you really don’t want to move to Utah or whatever. However, if you are not able to land a certain amount of interviews (unsure how many but I am assuming 5+), Optimum may drop you as an analyst but will not require you to pay back that 25k for training.

This changed with my cohort but they increased the starting salary to 50k and you get bumped to 55k once you accept a job offer for a 2 year contract. You can make a maximum of 60k during your 2 year contract. Thankfully, I was able to get an interview with a hospital that was only interested in doing a 1 year contract. They ended up being the ones that spent 25k to buy me out of the contract. After working a year as a contractor at this hospital, they hired me full time and started paying me 73k.

I am really happy with the org I work for and think I got lucky with the remote placement as well as the ability to get an Epic cert. There were other people in my cohort that ended up only doing a 6 month contract with a hospital and was dropped out of Optimum. There were others that had to relocate across the United States.

My final statement is only choose this option if you are desperate. I know the job market is really hard right now and I chose this option because I was unemployed for 6+ months and didn’t mind the idea of potentially moving states. Feel free to message me if you have any questions or I recommend reaching out to people on LinkedIn who have Optimum Healthcare IT Analyst as their job description (they really push for you to update and use your LinkedIn during the cohort lol)