Webinar: ONC's workforce development programs on track for success

To meet an expected rise in demand for health IT professionals as multiple federal initiatives encouraged hurried health IT adoption, the HITECH Act provided the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC) with approximately $2 billion to prepare a workforce for increasingly high-tech healthcare settings. It’s been nothing but smooth sailing since the ONC instituted its Health IT Workforce Development Program, said the presenters of a July 11 National eHealth Collaborative webinar.

Of the ONC’s four integrated development programs, presenters focused on two: the community college consortia to educate health IT professionals and the program of assistance for university-based training. The programs provide development opportunities at community college and university campuses across the U.S.

“For the implementation of EHRs to be successful, we need to train individuals to use the new technology,” said ONC Program Officer Cinyon Gilmore-Reed during webinar, titled “Careers in Health IT: Inside the ONC Workforce Development Program.”   

“Through the workforce programs we funded nine universities and 82 community colleges to train health IT specialists to help meet the anticipated shortage of 50,000 workers needed to help providers achieve meaningful use,” Reed continued.

Since the program’s inception, 13,000 have received training through the community college consortia and 1,300 are currently enrolled in university-based training. The programs prepare enrollees for 12 separate healthcare roles, including implementation support specialist, privacy and security specialist, software engineer and health IT trainer.

Because of the mutually beneficial relationships academic institutions have with their communities, each workforce development program site is also able to successfully identify local needs for health IT professionals and fill them with qualified individuals, according to Norma Morganti, executive director of the Midwest Community College Health IT Consortium, led by Cuyahoga Community College.

“We’re very involved in helping students transition,” Manganti said. “It’s not part of our metric, but we spend a lot of time on workforce development in our local communities.”