This week started off with a great “water-cooler chat” between me, a temp in the office and our IT guy. Our temp recently received HIT certification from a local community college and is looking for a career opportunity. He has a non-healthcare background and is doing all the right things in trying to secure a job. He managed to get on board with a medical group scanning documents into their EMR to acquire some tangible hands-on experience. He’s doing this on a volunteer basis.

I told our temp that he isn’t alone in his struggle to gain employment in a medical setting without prior healthcare experience or a specific information systems certification. We talked about how to resolve this issue and I told him I thought consulting firms were going to be the ones to build a bridge over the gap. Our IT guy, who works for a consulting firm, agrees. His firm has several clinical clients and those clients are increasingly calling for support.

Hospital IT departments are already busy, and creating a training program requires a lot of resources that aren’t immediately available. I haven’t seen any movement from information system vendors in reaching out to recent graduates and certification holders for technical positions, only sales. Consulting firms have a number of consultants with various certifications and levels of expertise. They are playing a vital role in adoption for hospitals and physician practices since these firms are equipped to handle all aspects of implementations, from planning to staff.

There has been an increase in consulting firms posting jobs to HIMSS JobMine. Demand for health IT professionals is only going to continue. It seems logical for consulting firms to create training or mentorship programs that get the recent graduates up to speed as a means of keeping up with demand.

Perhaps this is already happening? Please leave a comment if you know of firms offering training programs.

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.