Health IT Policy Committee: Workforce development subgroup offers recommendations

 “We’ve put the technology infrastructure in place, but now we need to move forward, and we need people knowledgeable in making the small adjustments to make health IT successful,” said Larry Wolf, health IT strategist, Kindred Healthcare, and co-chair of the Health IT Workforce Development subgroup, at the Office of the National Health IT Coordinator’s (ONC’s) Health IT Policy Committee meeting on May 7.

Wolf discussed the workforce development subgroup’s recommendations to prepare the health IT workforce for the technology challenges of tomorrow. The workgroup is charged with making recommendations to the Health IT Policy Committee to address health IT training needs and tools to meet them.

After 13 meetings, he said the subgroup identified three sets of workers: health workers at the point of care and those that support them; IT/informatics professionals; and information systems technology developers, operators and implementers. Looking at these workers, the subgroup developed the following recommendations:

1. Publicize results from ONC’s existing workforce programs
2. Identify core competencies from the above ONC programs
3. Publicize existing resources and best practices
4. Develop “healthcare of the future,” the emerging need for soft and hard skills related to team-based care, population health and patient engagement
5. Learn from what is happening with the current workforce by funding studies on factors impacting the health IT workforce, such as turnover, enrollment in healthcare vocations and new jobs like nurse informaticist
6. Begin process to develop current standard occupational classifications for health IT jobs 

The workgroup especially looked at how to create on-the-job situations to make good use of technology, he said, citing one-on-one training and short online videos with EHR tips to optimize use of the software as potential educational tools.

“For a lot of people, EHR systems are just a place to put information in and answer pop up reminders. That next level is how to improve outcomes, redesign workflow and learn to ask questions to improve it,” Wolf said. “It’s less about academic programs but how to actually make this effective for people who are out there delivering care.”