ONC Awards $84 Million for Health IT Workforce Development Program
Community College Training, University Certificate and Advanced Programs, Curriculum Development, and Competency Exams
Facts-At-A-Glance included
Released on Web site of Office of National Coordinator (ONC) for Health IT on April 2, 2010, $84 Million was awarded across four major programs to develop and deliver a workforce of professionals trained to support the HITECH initiative and rollout of Electronic Health Records. ONC’s Facts-At-A-Glance provides a summary of the programs with links to additional information. The e-Healthcare Marketing blog has excerpted this selection, as well as descriptions and and awards of the four programs in separate posts on April 2, 2010. Also the SHARP Research awards were made on the same day, and are described elsewhere on e-Healthcare Marketing, based on the ONC site.

Community College Consortia to Educate Information Technology Specialists in Health Care   

• The Community College Consortia Program provides approximately $70 million in assistance through cooperative agreements to five regional consortia. The five regions were created by pairing contiguous regions based on the population of the region.
• Each funded consortium will consist of a lead awardee and a number of identified member community colleges located within the region.
• Community colleges funded under this initiative will establish intensive, non-degree training programs that can be completed in six months or less by individuals with appropriate prior education and/or experience.
• Trainees are expected to be trained in six HIT priority workforce roles, including:
  practice workflow and information management redesign specialists; clinician/practitioner consultants; implementation support specialists; implementation managers; and technical/software support staff and trainers.
• It is expected that by the end of the two-year project period, the participating community colleges will have collectively established training programs with the capacity to train at least 10,500 students annually to be part of the health IT workforce.
• Cooperative agreements were awarded in April 2010 for a two-year project period.

Additional information is available at

 Information Technology Professionals in Health Care: Curriculum Development Centers 

• The Curriculum Development Centers Program provides approximately $10 million in assistance through cooperative agreements to five non-profit institutions of higher education to develop curriculum and instructional materials to enhance workforce training programs primarily at the community college level.
• Materials prepared in collaboration with community colleges and aligned with a common set of nationally validated competencies will enable the rapid launch of standardized academic programs that meet the needs of the health care industry.
• Materials developed under this program will be used by the members of the Community College Consortia Program as well as be made available to institutions of higher education across the country.
• One of the awardees under this program will receive additional funding to serve as a National Training and Dissemination Center that will train instructors, collect feedback from instructors and students, coordinate subsequent revisions of the curriculum materials, and manage version control of the revised materials.
• Cooperative agreements were awarded in April 2010 for a two-year project period.

Additional information is available at

 Information Technology Professionals in Health Care: Competency Examination for Individuals Completing Non-Degree Training 

• The Competency Examination Program provides approximately $6 million in assistance through a cooperative agreement to one institution of higher education to support the development and initial administration of a set of health IT competency examinations.
• This program will create an objective mechanism to assess basic competency for individuals trained through short-duration, non-degree health IT programs, and for members of the workforce with relevant experience or other types of training who are seeking to demonstrate their competency in one or more workforce roles.

• The competency examinations will be available at no charge to the first 10,000 examinees as part of the national Health IT Workforce Development Program.
• A cooperative agreement was awarded in April 2010 for a two-year project period.

Additional information is available at

 Information Technology Professionals in Health Care: Program of Assistance for University-Based Training 

• The University-Based Training Program provides approximately $32 million in assistance through competitively awarded training grants to nine institutions of higher education to establish programs that will rapidly increase the availability of individuals qualified to serve in specific health IT professional roles requiring university-level training.
• Each educational program will address one or more of the six targeted roles below, and each institution will include programs that address at least three of these roles.
• Clinical/public health leader
• Health information management and exchange specialist
• Health information privacy and security specialist
• Research and development scientist
• Programmer and software engineer
• Health IT sub-specialist

• Educational programs developed under these grants are expected to generate additional graduates in vital, highly specialized health IT roles over the course of the three-year grant period. The highly trained and specialized personnel developed through these programs will play an extremely important role in supporting meaningful use of health IT nationwide.

• The majority of the programs are expected to be completed in 12 months or less and lead to a university-issued certificate of advanced training (e.g., post-baccalaureate or graduate certificate) or a master’s degree.
• Cooperative agreements were awarded in April 2010 for a 39-month project period.

Additional information is available at http://HealthIT.HHS.Gov/universitytraining