14 Mar Federally-Funded HIT Programs: A Creative Way to Staff Your EMR Projects
As a healthcare professional, you’re well aware of the fast approaching EMR conversion deadline. And chances are, you’re wondering just how you’ll find the staff with the right mix of clinical knowledge and IT expertise to achieve meaningful use by the 2014 deadline. Your concerns are well-founded; after all, the US government estimates that we have a shortfall of about 50,000 HIT professionals in this country.
But here’s the good news: there is staff available to help you reach your EMR conversion goals. To find it, you may have to look no further than your local community colleges and their federally-funded HIT programs.
What are federally-funded HIT programs?
Collectively, these programs are formally known as the Community College Consortia to Educate Health Information Technology Professionals in Health Care. The Consortia is supported by a grant from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of the National Coordinator (ONC) for Health Information Technology.
The Consortia was created by a $70 million federal grant in 2010, with the goal to graduate 10,500 professionals in health IT each year through 2012. It grants monies to community colleges to develop or improve non-degree health IT training programs, many of which students can complete in six months or less. More than 80 community colleges nationwide participate in the program.
Why hiring graduates from federally-funded HIT programs makes sense
1st Solution USA partners with the HIT program at the University of Texas at Austin, and I can say firsthand that the intensive, extensive training these programs offer is second to none. For starters, students in these programs get hands-on experience with various EMR products.
Secondly, by the end of the program, students are certified in one of six different health IT roles and are armed with a number of skills, including health information technology, project management, workflow redesign, how to use various electronic health record systems, and more.
Best of all, many graduates of these programs are mid-career professionals who already have healthcare or IT backgrounds. So, the learning curve for them isn’t as steep as it would be for someone learning the industry from scratch. At the end of the program, they’re well-equipped to work with vendors to implement EMR and EHR systems in healthcare settings.
While hiring graduates from these federally-funded HIT programs isn’t the only way to staff your EMR conversion projects, it definitely is a win-win for everyone involved. What do you think?