The budget will include $30.7-billion for the National Institutes of Health, the same as the current year, but it will propose new grant-management policies that would increase the number of research grants by 7 percent. It would expand and make permanent the research-and-development tax credit.

The bulk of the job-training money would come in an $8-billion “Community College to Career Fund,” which would provide money to community colleges and states to form partnerships with businesses to train an estimated two million workers in high-growth and in-demand areas.

The election-year budget, which comes at a time of shrinking revenue and rising deficits, would also double the number of work-study jobs and reward colleges and states that slow their tuition growth and sustain their higher-education budgets.

Read full article.

At the same time, ONC issued an interim final regulation that set initial standards, implementation specifications, and certification criteria for EHR technology. In the closing months of 2009, ONC also issued a flurry of funding opportunities to support health information technology adoption, information exchange, and the workforce needed to make this important Recovery Act program succeed.

A year later, by the 2010 holiday season, vendors, newly accredited certification bodies, and a few vanguard providers were gearing up for the official launch of the EHR Incentive programs, which opened for registration on January 3, 2011. What has happened in the 12 months since then?

Read full article.

Jan. 27, 2012

Washington, D.C. – Recognizing that health information technology (IT) plays a critical role in improving the quality and cost-effectiveness of care, the Bipartisan Policy Center’s (BPC) Task Force on Delivery System Reform and Health IT today released a set of recommendations for the most effective use of health IT dollars to support delivery system and payment reforms to achieve improved health, better health care, and reductions in the cost of care. Click here for more.

We encourage you to watch the webcast and learn about health IT’s achievements and challenges. Key speakers included:

• Aneesh Chopra, United States Chief Technology Officer, Office of Science and Technology Policy, Executive Office of the President
• Farzad Mostashari, MD, ScM, National Coordinator for Health Information Technology
• David Blumenthal, MD, Samuel O. Thier Professor of Medicine and Professor of Health Care Policy at Massachusetts General Hospital/Partners HealthCare System and Harvard Medical School
• Leon Rodriguez, Director, HHS Office for Civil Rights
• Rick Gilfillan, MD, Acting Director, Center for Medicare & Medicaid Innovation (CMMI), Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services
• Jay Walker, Curator, TEDMED Conference

The report, “Jobs, Jobs, Jobs: Challenges Community Colleges Face to Reach the Unemployed,” is the third in a series based on results from the latest annual survey, conducted over the summer, of the 51 members of the National Council of State Directors of Community Colleges (Georgia has two).

Two years ago, 11 members of the council reported that unemployed workers in their states could attend community colleges tuition-free for retraining. By 2010, only four indicated that was the case. Unemployment, meanwhile, has remained stubbornly high, while stimulus funds have dwindled and state tax revenues have yet to bounce back. This year members from 21 states reported that funds for work-force training had been exhausted.

Nearly three-fourths of survey respondents agreed that in the face of such challenges, community colleges are being pushed to offer “quick” job training without academic credit. That limits colleges’ ability to invest in more expensive long-term programs, the report says, in fields like allied health, engineering, and information technology—the very fields that need more workers and tend to offer better pay. Forty-two members indicated that their states need more funds to expand programs in those areas.

The report ends with a warning. “Even as community colleges have long been known for persisting despite budget cuts and enrollment increases,” the authors say, “we are left wondering whether the sector has neared its limits.”

Source: Chronicle of Higher Education

The new health IT jobs that were promised as part of the government’s big push toward digital medical records are there, and there are plenty of job seekers to fill them, but are they the right people for the jobs?

Maybe not, recruiters who specialize in the sector told Healthcare IT News in May – at least not yet.

Hospitals, healthcare systems and physician practices are very particular about the skills and experience they want, said Betsy Hersher, president and founder of Hersher Associates in Deerfield, Ill.

Not only are employers looking for IT professionals with experience in healthcare, but they’re seeking experience with a particular vendor’s technology – Epic or Meditech, for example.

“Whether it’s an outside recruiter, or internally, everybody bangs their fist on the table and says: ‘We must have exactly this,’” said Hersher.

“We’re hiring a heck of a lot of very specialized clinical people,” she said. “I mean someone who’s done clinical transformation, someone who’s done clinical education, someone who’s put in CPOE, someone who’s put in the EMR. Oh, and it always has to be a specific vendor.”

“The people who are doing the hiring are very focused on vendors,” said Hersher. “But being a good recruiter, if I find the most perfect candidate in the world that walks on water and doesn’t have that system, by the time the client gets through that process, they realize that what they’re getting is the knowledge, and someone who has that knowledge can implement any system.”

Not everyone realizes that they don’t always need such targeted experience, and it almost always takes some coaxing, said Eric Marx, vice president of healthcare IT services for IT staffing and recruiting firm Modis, with 70 offices across the country.

Top of mind among healthcare employers today is the push to meet many deadlines at once, he said, such as conversion to HIPAA 5010 and ICD-10, along with efforts to qualify for government incentives by proving meaningful use of health IT. Employers are looking for someone who is already up to speed.

“We know we have a shortage,” Marx said. “We know the right people are difficult to find. But again, back to the idea of the deadlines with significant incentives and penalties potentially looming here, there’s really not a luxury of bringing someone in that doesn’t have the exact skill sets you need.”

Marx said he expects employers will change their approach, though, once they’ve met some of their deadlines.

“Right now what I’m seeing is the pain is not yet high enough for them to make a lot of creative alternative staffing plans,” he said. “So instead they’re basically just engaging in the war.”

That means healthcare organizations are willing to pay a premium to get precisely what they want.

Once some hurdles are cleared, Marx predicts, employers will become more willing to bring in some more general IT people from other industries and have a little more time to ramp them up with the clinical side.

“They’re going to have to do it if they’re going to keep their cost down,” he said. The approach they are taking now is not sustainable in the long run.

Meanwhile, the right people who happen to be in the right place at the right time can command a higher than usual salary – perhaps 10 percent to 20 percent above the usual market rates, said Marx.

“Healthcare remains a consistent growth industry in the U.S.,” said John Burkhardt, managing director of MedZilla.com, a website for professionals and employers in pharmaceuticals, pharmaceutical sales, biotechnology, science and medicine.

“It’s not just doctors and nurses, though, that are benefiting,” he said. “As the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act – healthcare reform – comes closer to its final effective date in 2014, information technology roles will continue to grow in both scope and number. People who never thought they’d be getting jobs in healthcare might someday be reporting to hospitals or medical technology firms.”

http://www.healthcareitnews.com/

The combination EHR/practice management product, called MyWay, claims to provide “intuitive design and intelligent navigation,” according to a description on the company website. Costco says that the product offers
adaptive learning, template-fee charting and easy customization.

In launching MyWay, the company used the same approach it has applied to other products: making large volume purchases of inventory and passing the savings on to members, Costco Director of EHR/PM services John Conion said in a statement.

“We want our members to keep as much of the $44,000 in stimulus funds for their business as possible,” Conion said. The product costs $499 a month for Costco executive members, and $599 a month for non executive
members, both based on a 60 month lease-to-own contract.

This is not the first foray into the EHR market by a big box retailer: In 2009, Walmart explored a partnership with Dell and eClinicalWorks to offer EHRs to its Sam’s Club members. The product was discontinued in March
2011, according to a Sam’s Club representative.

To learn more:
- read the press release
- read this Health Data Management article
- check out this Costco Connection piece on EHRs (.pdf)

Designed to jump start EHR adoption, the Health Information Technology Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act of 2009, part of the Recovery Act, created a nationwide network of RECs comprised of local nonprofits, to provide guidance and resources to help eligible professionals make the transition from paper records to certified EHRs.  Eligible providers that meet meaningful use of certified EHRs criteria may be eligible for incentive payments under the Recovery Act.

The 62 RECs focus on assisting primary care providers and those providers serving traditionally medically underserved populations as they take part in the Medicare and Medicaid EHR Incentive Programs and meaningfully use EHRs in ways that can reduce health care costs, increase patient safety, and improve the overall quality of patient care.  These providers face challenges in EHR adoption including tight budgets, over-stretched health information technology staff, and limited broadband access.

“The RECs are playing an integral role in helping providers on the path to EHR adoption,” said Farzad Mostashari, MD, ScM, the Office of National Coordinator for Health Information Technology.  “This compelling milestone demonstrates strong interest in adoption and meaningful use among community health centers, small practices, and rural providers that can lead to improvements in health and healthcare.”

One-half of the providers committed to making the transition to certified EHRs are in small group practices or consortia of small group practices.  The remaining providers focus on the underserved with 18 percent in community health centers, 11 percent in public hospitals, and 21 percent in other underserved settings, such as critical access hospitals, rural health clinics, and practices in medically underserved areas.

RECs serve the majority of primary care providers in small practices in rural areas.  Today’s figures include over half of the targeted 1,776 critical access and rural hospitals in 41 states and throughout Indian Country.

A complete listing of REC grant recipients and additional information about Regional Extension Centers may be found athttp://www.HealthIT.hhs.gov/REC/.

For more information about how health IT can lead to safer, better, and more efficient health care, visithttp://www.healthit.gov/.

For information about the Medicare and Medicaid EHR Incentive Programs, seehttp://www.cms.gov/EHRIncentivePrograms.

For information about HHS Recovery Act health IT programs, seehttp://www.hhs.gov/recovery/announcements/by_topic.html#hit.

http://www.hhs.gov/news/press/2011pres/11/20111117a.html

Essential Elements of Healthcare Information Exchange

As healthcare organizations continue to transition from gathering data through EHR systems toward building knowledge based on that data, the ability to exchange patient information, consistently, privately and securely becomes ever more paramount to improving quality of care. In this first-of-its-kind class in Southern California, some of the region’s most experienced HIE leaders will present the essential elements of an HIE. Click here for course flyer.