HIT Workforce Training

At the AHIMA meeting in San Francisco in early October, Dr. David Blumenthal, the national coordinator for health IT, announced government estimates that 50,000 new jobs would need to be created to support adoption of electronic medical records in the US. This was followed late last month when the Department of Health and Human Services announced $80 million in grants to train the health IT workforce.

The grant funds would be distributed in two pools. Institutions of higher learning with established health IT training programs will receive grants totaling $10 million for up to five Curriculum Development Centers to help create curricula designed for rapid training of students, using a standardized format. The assignment for grant applicants is to develop education programs in a collaborative fashion in which students with some previous background in health care will receive their health IT training over a six month span. The curriculum framework addresses 20 subject areas of expertise needed to perform health IT jobs. Grants are to be awarded in March 2010.

The second pool of funds consisting of $60 million will be distributed to about 70 community colleges in 5 national regions to establish the programs and perform the actual training. These training programs must ramp up rapidly to meet the two-year grant requirements. Training for six different roles is to be offered. These roles are:

Practice workflow and information management redesign specialists
Clinician/practitioner consultants
Implementation support specialists
Implementation managers
Technical/software support staff
Trainers

Trainees completing the programs are expected to have the skills necessary to support the Regional Extension Centers that are scheduled to kickoff early next year (first round grant winners should be announced in mid-January 2010. The HHS goal is to provide training to 10,500 students annually.

Analysis: HHS certainly has lofty goals. It would be great if ARRA helps create 51,000 new jobs in the Health IT arena. There are a lot of unknowns though. First, it will take several years to find out how much ARRA clinician incentives stimulate the adoption of EMRs/EHRs. So the actual demand for new trainees is not known. Second, it takes a lot of time and effort to get an education program started and running from scratch. I'm not sure the rapid development plans are adequately funded to meet the published requirements. Third, there is the issue of recruitment. Trained, experienced faculty will not simply materialize. There is a long lead time for faculty development and recruitment. Likewise, recruitment programs will need to be developed to attract qualified students. Furthermore, I question whether a six month training program will provide students with the necessary skills to meet the actual demands of the health IT industry. Just touching on all twenty of the required subject areas is going to take considerable time. Fourth, will an adequate supply of graduates from these programs be available in time to staff the Regional Extension Centers or other employers in time to help those clinicians interested in garnering the maximum ARRA incentives that will only be available on a very tight timeline? Finally, the recession has had a dramatically negative effect on budgets for higher education and associated student fees. The financial barriers will be difficult to overcome, even with the federal grant funds.

Look for future posts in which I will discuss training of the health IT workforce in more detail.