Another year is drawing to a close and government mandated deadlines are now on the not-so-distant horizon. Is your organization prepared? Many hospitals and health systems have pegged 2012 as the year to get their “house in order.” All of these transitions require money. Not just to cover the cost of the technology, but to hire the staff.

If you’re a hiring manager for an organization working to meet these deadlines, hopefully you have met with your CIO and identified what positions need to be created and filled in order to achieve implementation goals. Some of these positions may be on a temporary basis while others will be permanent, full time. Depending on where your organization stands with meaningful use readiness will determine just how much hiring needs to be done. There are solutions in the form of an Implementation Manager - a more niche position than Project Manager, or a Meaningful Use Consultant – performs same duties as an Implementation Manager and also serves in an advisory capacity to monitor compliance as policies change.

The benefits of hiring an Implementation Manager or Meaningful Use Consultant are many, here are just a few:

1. Experience - can easily perform an assessment, map out the scope of the project as well as design and implement.
2. Easily identifies needs: the hiring of the implementation team is usually done by the Implementation Manager; management of vendor relations such as providing schedules, deliverables, and business information to health IT vendors for product improvement that is specific to the worksite.
3. Interacts and communicates with all levels of personnel, establishing a connection with the end-users and support team.
4. Has an understanding of health IT, meaningful use, and the challenges clinical settings will encounter in achieving meaningful use.

Meaningful Use Consultants can also assist with securing government funding for the project. They are familiar with the HITECH Act and can offer valuable insight with navigating through any red tape. For the smaller physician practice, that might not have the internal IT resources available for implementation, bringing in an expert to oversee the project from beginning to end can save money and a lot of headaches.

Many hospitals have increased their recruiting budget for 2012 and are purchasing larger job posting packages on JobMine. I’ve also noticed there are more Implementation Managers emerging through sheer demand. With the meaningful use deadlines fast approaching, I anticipate these trends to continue in the year to come.
 

E.J. Fechenda is the Audience Data Manager for MedTech Media. Since 2008 she has helped manage Healthcare Finance JobSpot and Healthcare IT JobSpot - now merged with HIMSS JobMine. She is not a Human Resources professional, nor a healthcare expert, but over the years she's accumulated a lot of feedback and insight from both job seekers and employers alike. Each week E.J. will deliver a blog based on this information. One week will be employer focused and the next week, job seeker focused.