Six months ago, the Office of the National Coordinator awarded $64 million in cooperative agreements for the “Health IT Workforce Development Program.” HITECH authorized the creation of such a program to create or expand education programs across the United States to train a highly skilled workforce of health IT professionals. These professionals are anticipated to be needed to put in place – and enable the use of – secure, interoperable EHRs.
The Health IT Workforce Development Program is part of the educational spectrum and fills an important gap. For example, through the Community College Consortia Program, adults have the opportunity to earn certificates in health IT. Dr. Blumenthal, National Coordinator, has an open letter on the ONC website discussing the workforce programs and noting that the first graduates had emerged from this program.
Now, 84 such courses are underway at community colleges across the nation. We’ve heard from one program – the University of Texas at Austin – that its health IT summer certificate program graduates have been placed with EHR vendor firms, consulting firms, RECs, and health systems all over the country. Only a few students have yet to secure a position.
There is no doubt that education at all levels is important – community college, undergraduate, graduate, doctoral, and post-doc. Our next generation of leaders must be equipped.
HIMSS has a 50-year long history of supporting high-quality education for health professionals to ensure their competency in IT and management systems. For example, the Society has been a long-time member of CAHME – the Commission for the Accreditation of Health Management Education. I now serve on the Board of CAHME, representing HIMSS.
CAHME serves the public good by promoting, evaluating, and improving the quality of graduate-level health management education in both the US and Canada. More than 130 colleges and universities in North America are accredited by CAHME. The intent of CAHME is to ensure that graduate students emerging from their master’s programs are equipped for managing healthcare environments in the 21st century.
What I’m wondering about is the job market. While our nation is beginning to show the first signs of emergence from our very difficult economic recession, we continue to hear news of firms in the healthcare space laying off workers. Conversely, like the University of Texas at Austin example above, we are hearing news about some hiring underway.
I’d like to hear from you. Does your employer have plans to hired new health IT workers in the near future? If so, what types of skills will you be seeking? How many jobs do you think might be created?
This question has been a running meme in the Nashville area business press and social media sites. In short, healthcare company HR departments “seem” to be fixating on experience with a particular vendor’s product to the COMPLETE EXCLUSION of folks with experience in the general area who could be trained in short order to deal with another particular solution. I think this is a mindset that must be changed and that HIMSS could help target it head one because otherwise the hiring process is massively inefficient and frustrating to all involved.
Hi Ed, Thanks so much for taking the time to post a comment on my blog entry. On the HIMSS team, we’ve been keeping our “ears to the ground” listening for any news about hiring. Just this past week, I did a quick survey of our team, and we’ve heard of a few organizations hiring. Your point about training specific to a EHR product is understood. I’d welcome hearing from some of the vendors in the market about their training programs. Could anyone enlighten us about the educational opportunities on EHR-specific products?
Unfortunately, if you look at most of the Health IT jobs available now, these organizations are looking for people who are currently certified in an EMR product. Given that the intention of the workforce development program – which I fully support, mind you – was to help strengthen the Health IT workforce, it’s a tough argument to make that a certification from one of these community college or even an advanced degree in Health IT will help someone get hired who has never worked with McKesson, Cerner, or Epic. That’s not to say it doesn’t happen, but when employers place such an emphasis on having prior experience working with their EMR product, it makes it that much more difficult for those looking to get into the Health IT arena to get their foot in the door.
Health IT programs need to keep in mind, though, that developing and implementing these EMR systems, and other medical IT solutions, is much like developing and implementing other IT solutions. The software development lifecycle still applies the same. Yet, there is such a focus on learning about healthcare and IT’s benefits to streamlining healthcare workflows and reducing medical errors. Some programs lose sight that if these individuals are to receive an education that will position them to help implement and ultimately maintain these systems, they need to understand basic healthcare essentials, but learn to step through the process of working with clinicians to best fit those IT solutions to their needs. As long as this continues to be taught, and taught well, the workforce can be successful. However, if the emphasis is just on learning what “informatics” and HIPAA are, we’re setting ourselves up for failure.
I understand your point, Jeff. Thanks for taking the time to share with us. The point of a valuable certificate program needs to be as you say – to position job seekers by equipping them with implementation and maintanence skills that includes “how-to” work with clinicians + the basics of the healthcare work flow. Here in Southeast Michigan (I’m based in Ann Arbor), I can remember about 10 years ago that one of the automakers provided the services of their workflow engineers to a local hospital. The intent was noble – to identify appropriate best practices of the manufacturing industry and tweak them so they could be adopted by the hospital to effectively shepherd patients through an efficacious healthcare experience in the hospital. The ironic upshot of the story was that the auto engineers – using tried-and-proven manufacturing processes – recommended shutting down the ER (followed by the OR) to re-tool and re-engineer the environments. Obviously, that never happened. The noble experiment was abandoned because – to your point – the engineers simply didn’t understand the flow of healthcare. Their recommendation was absurd.
Great question Carla!
I’ve been asking myself the same one for the past few months.
I have experience in health data exchange standards and meaningful use.
I have also applied for the Columbia Univ. HIT certificate program.
I’m debating whether the expense is worth it.
I am talking to 1 or 2 companies with open positions in data exchange.
However, I haven’t seen the flood of openings that is supposedly coming.
I hear that HIT vendors face a shortage of consultants and prospects.
Where are the job postings?
Hi Gary, We are seeing an increase in job postings on the HIMSS Job Mine (an online service to post open positions in health IT and management systems). Through a couple of HIMSS listserves, we are also observing an increase in some chatter about open positions. These are positive signs, certainly, and I welcome all feedback so that we can all learn together about what opportunities are out there. The University of Texas at Austin’s experience is heartening – that nearly all of the summer certificate graduates have found work in the field. You might want to talk with Columbia about their job placement services. And, by all means, keep your eyes on HIMSS – we are strengthening our efforts to help job seekers find meaningful work!
Thanks Carla!
Maybe the summer was just quiet; I received a call back today.
It looks promising. I will definitely check the resources you mentioned in case I don’t get hired.
Thanks again for your advice.
Yes, I agree.
Some providers I contacted won’t look at me since I don’t have experience, or some kind of certification, with Epic. I can’t get certification with Epic since it’s only open to Epic’s clients.
I have hands on experience with HL7 CCD, and have worked with clinicians to understand some areas of work flow.
The reason I applied to Columbia is they offer some mentoring by vendors. There does seem to be an emphasis on collaboration in teams. I’m not sure how much is in a clinical setting rather than the class room.
The web site for the U of Texas certification shows students in a clinical setting. But I’m not familiar with the program.
I had pictured these programs set up similar to nursing or medical resident training. That is, trainees would “shadow” clinicians in a specific department to understand their work flow and mindsets. That may be too idealistic, though.
Hi Gary, there are some online courses available through the eLearning Academy to help an IT professional understand clinical workflow. For example, there’s a course called “Optimizing IT’s Customer Service and Relationships with Clinical Staff”. You can find a description at: https://himss.learn.com/files/pdf/FY09___Optimizing_ITs_Customer_Service___12.15.09.pdf. There’s a course on Project Management and another on Program Management. All are from the perspective of what an IT professional needs to know in a healthcare setting. Plus, you might want to poke around the entire eLA catalog – there are many 60-minute sessions that might be valuable to you. And, best of all, some of them are complimentary. I hope this helps.
Hmm.. great!
Again, thanks for the resources.
Hi Carla,
My experience in breaking into HIT has been similar to Gary, above. Although I have over a decade of technology experience, there doesn’t seem to be any job posting that will seriously consider a candidate without clinical or Health IT experience.
In the meanwhile, I have been taking coursework with HIMSS and online at Santa Barbara City College. As an example of the “closed door” experience mentioned above, Santa Barbara City College just began a fast-paced HIT program (which sounds akin to the U of Texas program) but it is only offered to clinicians and practitioners. In conclusion, it appears that the Health IT “calling all hands” workforce effort is, presently, only calling all hands that already have clinical and EHR experience; even at the community college level.
That said, I have some questions:
1. For those of us entering HIT without clinical or EHR experience, what can make us more marketable? Coursework or HIT certificates? HIT degrees?
2. What certificates are being offered that will have real-world value to prospective employers?
Michael,
Like I mentioned above, I received a call back. I do have some HIT experience, but no extensive experience in a clinical setting. My experience with the HL7 Continuity of Care Document standard gave me an edge. You can check out HL7 for some certification programs; if you’re interested in data exchange.
I’ve seen quite a few postings for Epic implementations. Like I wrote above, they seem to want Epic certification. You may want to contact CalRec or SafetyNet Institute. Both are in Oakland, I believe. I worked for a company last year who was dealing with them. Our project was put on hold, but I do know they are rolling out Epic throughout the state. They are in charge of around 19 providers. Maybe you can sell them on your other IT skills. Just a thought. It’s definitely frustrating that Epic certification is not available to the public. Good luck.
Michael, those are great questions. Ancedotally, we are hearing conflicting reports regarding what qualifications and skills employers are looking for. We are trying to cut through the confusion by doing some research to find out what’s really underway. And, I think I’m going to reach out directly to the University of Texas at Austin to find out more about what qualifications the summer certificate students entered the program with, and what type of health IT jobs they were able to secure at the conclusion of their training. I want to thank you for taking the time to share your experience and helping us with some very concrete, practical questions. Does anyone have any ideas or responses to share with Michael?
I believe that a lot of this speaks to a tightened employment market; employers are looking for those with niche expertise — already with both clinical and IT experience — can find it. So, the challenge in transitioning professions, is how to both offer relevant training AND how to ensure that trainees get hands on, clinical and IT experience.
Kari,
Thanks for your post. I’d like to share a little known secret: many hospital employees, IT included, are hired as a result of volunteer activities at the very same hospital that he or she volunteered at. So, while your initial response may be disheartening, I would encourge you to consider a volunteer position in order to understand more about the organization which you seek to become employed.
If they are a NPO hospital you may wish to go directly to a board member and determine if anyone has ever been hired by this means at a particular hospital. An open secret in the NPO world is that they get many person hours donated with the unstated goal of being hired but no person ever actually receives employment. Especially in towns with many colleges and universities, some NPOs glean many free person hours from students and depend on the myth that all NPOs hire this way. Get the facts about a particular org (for profit as well) BEFORE investing the time so that you can go in with eyes WIDE OPEN.
I agree with Jeff Danto when he stated that “most of Health IT jobs available now, these organizations are looking for people who are currently certified in an EMR product”. I am currently a student at UIC and worked for Health department for 15 years now, and I applied for a position in the field and heard noting back. How do we get our foot in the door if they are looking for people with certain skills set? And will jobs be available upon my completion? I am thinking is it worth the struggle of trying to pay for school? Will it pay off for me? I would hope so.
I am wondering if there is something out there for people like me, just starting out but have several years of experience IT and/or implementing a EMR system but not in the application(s) companies are looking for?
The advice from above comments is good. I’ve found every organization has a different culture with regards to volunteers. Some appreciate the initiative, and may hire the volunteer when a position comes. Others don’t appreciate your value when you volunteer.
Hi Felicia, Thanks for taking the time to post your questions. My overarching comment is Yes! education is worth it. I hope that you are taking advantage of your connections at UIC to create new relationships with potential employers. Start with your professors, and branch out into networking at health-related association chapter events. For example, reaching out to the leaders of the Greater Chicago HIMSS chapter. Volunteering to help with an upcoming event is a great way to network with professionals. ACHE also has a chapter in Chicago that may provide some excellent networking opportunities. I very much appreciate your engagement in this blog and helping us to better understand the current situation you’re facing. I wish you the best of luck and ask that you keep in touch. If there are other ways we can help, please let me know.