Blumenthal Letter #13: Preparing Professionals for a Nationwide Health Care Transformation
- Dr. David Blumenthal
A Message from Dr. David Blumenthal, National Coordinator for Health Information Technology
Emailed April 7, 2010
(Additional post from ONC Chief Scientific Officer, Dr. Charles Friedman excerpted from ONC Blog below.)
I know that health care providers are concerned about implementing new health information technology and finding professionals who can operate and maintain such systems. I know many clinicians are unsure how they will develop or strengthen their skill set to incorporate using health IT efficiently and effectively without jeopardizing their communication with patients during a clinical visit. It seems like a daunting transformation to clinicians themselves and, indeed, for our health care system overall. The HITECH Act recognized that the success of this health IT journey depends on people: people who are passionate about improving patient care, and who are supported in making those improvements.
To this end, the Department of Health and Human Services awarded $84 million to 16 institutions of higher education to fund the Health IT Workforce Development Program, which focuses on several key resources required to rapidly expand the availability of health IT professionals who will support broad adoption and use of health IT in the provider community. Those resources include:
- A community college training program to create a workforce that can facilitate the implementation and support of an electronic health care system
- Quality educational materials that institutions of higher education can use to construct core instructional programs
- A competency examination program to evaluate trainee knowledge and skills acquired through non-degree training programs
- Additional university programs to support certificate and advanced degree training
The Workforce Development Program is one of the best examples of the depth of thought behind the HITECH Act. We could spend many billions of dollars developing, incentivizing, and implementing health IT solutions, but without an effectively trained workforce, our efforts would fall short of their ultimate goal of improving patient care. These efforts, designed in collaboration with the National Science Foundation, Department of Education, and the Department of Labor, are estimated to reduce the shortfall of qualified health IT professionals by 85 percent.
I congratulate the Workforce Development Program awardees and look forward to working with them on this important initiative. Those who take advantage of professional training in health IT provided through award recipients will find opportunities for interesting, challenging, and important work. Not only do these opportunities represent new jobs, they represent promising careers in a growing sector of our economy.
Sincerely,
David Blumenthal, M.D., M.P.P.
National Coordinator for Health Information Technology
U.S. Department of Health & Human Services
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(See post on e-Healthcare Marketing “ONC Funds Twelve Health IT Priority Workforce Roles’ Training: What are They?“)
Health IT Buzz Blog Post from Dr. Charles Friedman, Chief Scientific Officer, ONC
Focus on People: Building the Health IT Workforce
Wednesday, April 7th, 2010 | Posted by: Dr. Charles Friedman | Category: Grants, HITECH Programs, ONC
Excerpted from ONC Web site on April 7, 2010.
We frequently talk about health IT with an emphasis on the technology. But at the heart of the transformation of our health system, it’s really all about people. Above all, it’s about improving care for all Americans.
Health care providers are passionate about the work they do. As the nation moves toward meaningful use of health information technology, it is also about preparing a well-trained, equally passionate health IT workforce. Although there are many excellent training programs currently in place, the nation needs more health IT workers than the current training capacity can produce, and it needs individuals specifically trained for a very wide range of important roles.
Working with the educational community, we have identified 12 specific health IT workforce roles. All 12 roles are required to support adoption of health IT and sustain its meaningful use. Six of the 12 roles can be addressed through intensive short-term training based in community colleges, and the other six require longer programs university-based training. Every person trained to undertake each of these roles must understand, in ways appropriate to that role, BOTH health care AND information technology.
Now, we have laid the foundation for building the health IT workforce by allocating $84 million in grants to domestic institutions of higher education. These grants are distributed over four complementary programs that together will rapidly begin meeting the nation’s needs. Two of the programs will directly support greatly expanded training in community colleges and universities. Another program will create and disseminate high quality educational materials that will be used in the community college program, but will also be available to the entire nation. The fourth will create health IT competency examinations to help verify that trainees have the knowledge and skills required to be effective in their jobs.
Because the workforce need is acute, these new programs will ramp up very quickly. Training in community colleges and universities will begin this fall. All programs of study will be intense and highly rigorous to produce trained workers as quickly as possible. The programs will be flexibly designed to meet the needs of adult learners. We expect that many of the trainees will come to the program with prior training in either health care or IT. The program will move them into the workforce as rapidly as possible by building on what they already know and filling in any gaps in their knowledge.
Finally, as the nation recovers from the recession, health IT will be a source of increasing numbers of well-paying, fulfilling jobs. At full capacity, the community colleges directly supported by these grants will produce over 10,000 workers per year.
These programs will position us for success in transforming health care through meaningful use of information technology.
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See post on e-Healthcare Marketing “ONC Funds Twelve Health IT Priority Workforce Roles’ Training: What are They?”
