August 21, 2010

Plugging into demand for health care IT jobs

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It's no secret that health care is one of the few growth areas for job seekers, both locally and nationwide. For decades, the health care industry has gone through chronic and well-documented shortages in nursing and in physical therapy personnel.

In the next few years, however, as the federal health care reform bill kicks in, the Puget Sound region, with its high concentration of top-notch medical research facilities, can expect to see a spike in demand for jobs in administrative roles, such as information technology (IT).

According to Beth Zborowski, director of program communications at the Washington State Hospital Association, the state is already seeing an increase in the number of children who are now covered under the reform bill and will most likely see a surge of adults entering the health insurance system by 2014, when the rest of the reform bill provisions kick in. The industry, which is already scrambling to convert its old paper medical records to digital form, will also have to deal with a vast increase in patients as the baby-boom generation ages, she adds.

This is where IT skills will come in handy. "Health care is the one bright light on the IT horizon," says Patricia Dombrowski, director of the Life Science Informatics Center at Bellevue College. "As hospitals continue to digitize their medical records, the federal government is offering a lot of financial incentives to community colleges to train for this demand."

After receiving $6.1 million in grants from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, the Washington State Health Care Authority worked with Bellevue College to create an 18-credit Healthcare Informatics certification course. This six-month course, Dombrowski says, is designed for "dislocated IT workers" who have lost jobs in other sectors and are looking to get a foot in the door at local hospitals and clinics.

Students enrolling in the Bellevue College course will receive intensive training about hospital practices and culture, patient safety and security, and basic medical terminology. They will also get hands-on training from chief information officers at large medical organizations about how electronic medical records are managed.

The online Healthcare Informatics course, which was launched in January 2010 for 30 students, was filled quickly, Dombrowski says. The next course, set to begin in September, is already full with another 30 students, but another is planned for January 2011. "We had planned to only hold this once a year, but we had to double our capacity because of the demand," she says.

Down the road, Dombrowski says, Bellevue College is planning to create new curricula for other growing health care fields, including a course for office managers at physicians' offices and another about "telemedicine" for the growing home health care market.

"For a lot of immigrants, providing care for patients who live at home can be their first step to employment," she explains. "For many of these workers, the future will involve the use of wireless technology and hand-held devices to perform examinations of patients remotely and to stay in contact with hospitals is real time."

Telemedicine, Dombrowski says, will be the "next big thing in health care. We're working on a very fast track to develop a curriculum."

Randy Woods writes about job-search tools, networking techniques and other tips to help you land your dream job.

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career change, education, health care, IT

1 Comments

georgia england on August 27, 2010 8:48 AM | Reply

All of the local hospitals have already implemented health IT and you don't need a certificate to get hired. People who currently work in doctors offices and at hospitals who want to upgrade their skills are the target market not new entrants to the industry.

Just as an aside it is a common myth that the baby boomers will result in more hospital stays.. This demographic is much healthier then their parents were and there is no data to support this. Remember who the hospital association speaks for.. - the "BUSINESS" of hospitals not healthcare.

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