Health Care Providers, Industry Preparing for Surge in Health IT Jobs

From iHealthBeat

Friday, October 23, 2009

Health Care Providers, Industry Preparing for Surge in Health IT Jobs

On Thursday, a panel of health IT experts agreed that the federal economic stimulus package is likely to spur the creation of about 50,000 new health IT jobs, Healthcare IT News reports.

The group spoke during the annual Connected Health Symposium in Boston.

They said many health IT vendors are positioning themselves to recruit a large talent pool of health IT professionals.

John Glaser -- CIO of Partners HealthCare and adviser to National Coordinator for Health IT David Blumenthal -- said the government plans to allocate funds for health IT training. He said he expects health care providers and vendors also to dole out funds for training programs.

Challenges

Panel members also discussed some of the hurdles that a new health IT work force could face.

For example, Glaser said it will be difficult to predict how long it will take to create the 50,000 new jobs, and another panel member noted that nurses might be unprepared for a transition to fully electronic systems.

In addition, panelists noted that colleges and universities might need to scale up their training programs, particularly for advanced-level programs (Monegain, Healthcare IT News, 10/23)