Work Force for Health Information Transformation: A Strategy Summit

The current lack of a comprehensive plan for training the healthcare workforce to use new technologies is a potentially serious rate-limiting factor in the adoption and effective use of electronic health records (EHR) and other health IT tools, warns a group of experts who gathered Nov 9, 2005 at the first-ever workforce for Health Information Transformation: A Strategy Summit in Washington, DC.

Because of the research and strategies developed by NoVaHealthFORCE addressing the Health Information Management workforce needs members of NoVaHealthFORCE were invited to attend this Summit.  Representing NoVaHealthFORCE were: Dr. J. Goodlett McDaniel from George Mason University, Marsha Smith representing the Northern Virginia Workforce Investment Board, Janet Hinchcliff from PricewaterhouseCoopers, Dave Williams from Northern Virginia Community College’s Office of Workforce Development and Brian Foley from the Medical Education Campus of Northern Virginia Community College.

“With workforce shortages looming over the next several decades, healthcare needs to look at new ways to recruit, train, and retain workers who can effectively use new technologies to improve patient care and watch the bottom line,” says Laura Ginsburg of the Office of Apprenticeship Training, Employer and Labor Services, U.S. Department of Labor – ETA.

The summit—co-sponsored by the American Health Information Management Association (AHIMA) and the American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA)—brought together public and private stakeholders from academia, professional associations, provider and payer organizations, business, industry, and government to develop a roadmap for how the industry can build a trained workforce to implement and support health information systems.

Some of the key challenges identified by the group include a lack of awareness regarding the scope and urgency of workforce training needs, disagreement on the core skill set needed, insufficient economic motivation to change education, and a lack of ownership for funding training programs.

“If we collectively seek to create a healthcare system that is safe, efficient, timely, patient centered, equitable, and effective, then every time you invest in technology, you must also invest in people to use this technology wisely and well,” adds Charles Safran, MD, AMIA Chairman.

Some immediate recommendations from the group are:

• Use emerging common definition of an EHR to drive workforce training plans.
• Define core skills so that education can accommodate multiple roles and areas of healthcare practice.
• Integrate IT competencies throughout the professional education of all healthcare workers.
• Find sources of funding to support training so healthcare employees aren’t forced to bear the cost burden to improve and update skills.
• Create awareness among technology-oriented students about careers in health information management (HIM), informatics and health IT.
• Educate the public about new technologies and demystify the healthcare process for increasingly empowered patients.

“While new technology promises much improvement in healthcare delivery, a workforce with the knowledge of how to best use these tools are needed,” said Mervat Abdullah, PhD, RHIA, AHIMA President. “This means providing appropriate training and empowerment for healthcare employees in all care settings, as well as educating current and future students to work in an electronic environment.”

A full report from the summit will be made available to the industry in early 2006.