HEALTH CARE AND HUMAN SERVICES POLICY, RESEARCH, AND CONSULTING - WITH REAL-WORLD PERSPECTIVE.
Building a Health Information Technology
Workforce: Comments and Reflections
June 26, 2010
Carol J. Simon
The Promise of Health Information Technology:
gy
an evolutionary step in health care?
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Or not?
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Gains from HIT will not come from technology,
gy,
or information
Use, or better,
Meaningful Use is key
 allow decision making based on
broad experience
Reduce
R d
th
the iisolation
l ti off th
the solo,
l
rural, non-networked provider
Improve
I
evidence-based
id
b d care
Reduce disparities
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What does the system
y
need to do? What does
the workforce need to support & enable?
 Effectively gather and combine information from
multiple care sites: interoperability,
interoperability security
 Integrate the data (experience) with what we know
from research: analytics
 Support clinical decision-making: DSS
 Integrate into the clinical workflow: USE
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Major
j Challenge:
g integration
g
into clinical
workflow
 Studies show initial drops in physician productivity
 Understanding WHO uses (or needs to use the systems
 Physician? Nurse, administrative staff?
 Getting
G tti pastt d
doubts,
bt negative
ti perceptions:
ti
ffounded
d d and
d
otherwise
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Thinking about the 50,000 new jobs
 Roughly 3-8 fold increase in the size of he current
workforce
 But relatively small in number given the required
expansion of the health care workforce over the next
decade
 In 2008 14.3 million health care jobs; BLS projects need for 28-
33% increase in current decade
 Opportunity? Use/modify existing pipelines to meet HIT
workforce needs
 Clinical/”use”
Cli i l/” ” orientation
i t ti
 Existing infrastructure
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Thinking
g about the 50,000
,
new jjobs: what types
yp
skills and professions
Systems
y
design
g and development*
p
Installation and maintenance*
Cl
Clinical
cal Use
HITECH training
g agenda
g
focuses on *
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How can workforce p
policy
y help
p develop
p the HIT
workforce we need?
Target: what types of jobs?
 Gaps in focus on clinical integration, use of
pp
decision-support
 Cross-training for flexibility, innovation,
uncertainty
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How can workforce p
policy
y help
p develop
p the HIT
workforce we need?
 Form? What do we support? Can/should draw on long
policyy
historyy off education p
 Training program capacity – build the pipeline**
 Educator capacity:
p
y ensure facultyy and curriculum
support
 Lesson from nursing, demand for HIT professionals may
pull educators into private sector
 Increase demand for training: information and
incentives to students and prospective students –
evidence
d
that
h this
h is important, esp in SSR
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How can workforce p
policy
y help
p develop
p the HIT
workforce we need?
 Funding:
 ARRA providing huge resources
 Get what you pay for
 Focused investment rather than low-level
low level diffuse spending
 Sustainability: build into investments mechanisms
that help programs sustain initiatives
 Public private partnerships
 Focus on measurable ROI
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Thank you!
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