Diana Manos, Senior Editor
Diana Manos is Senior Editor for Healthcare IT News. Located in Washington, D.C., she covers policy and legislation issues surrounding healthcare IT. Follow Diana on Twitter @DManos_IT_News.
Community college training of HIT professionals questioned
University of Michigan School of Public Health
January 10, 2012From the January 2012 print issue
Is the federal program delivering?
WASHINGTON – The government plans to fork out a total of nearly $70 million in grants to five community colleges assigned with leading a federal healthcare IT training program. But is the Community College Consortia to Educate Health Information Technology Professionals delivering?
Since its inception in March, some think it’s not – at least not yet. At a recent meeting of the Health IT Policy Committee, member and Florida state legislator Gayle Harrell, said she has concerns. Her constituents have been complaining that graduates of the program have not had enough hands-on training, she said.
Funded by the American Reinvestment & Recovery Act of 2009, the consortia of 82 community colleges was designed to offer six-month training courses for as many as 10,500 students each year.
Patricia Dombrowski is director of the Life Science Informatics Center at Bellevue College in Bellevue, Washington. Her school heads Region A of the program, covering the 10 northwestern states.
Dombrowski has good things to report about the program’s success so far. Her region has surpassed all of its goals in 2011.
If there is a lack of hands-on training, she said, it’s not for lack of trying. Vendors have been unwilling to grant students access to their electronic health record products, for fear of proprietary breech.
Dombrowski feels confident, however, that healthcare IT vendors will come around. “It’s an indication of how young this sector is. The idea of what's proprietary is still so incredibly high,” she said.
To solve the problem for now, Dombrowsi said her region has been working to attract vendors to set up a vendor lending library. In addition, the ONC has provided access to the Veterans Administration’s VISTA system.
Showing 5 Comments
Vin Williams say: Community College training of HIT professionals BIG question????
April 18, 2012 | 10:47 AM GMT
This is a big question mark for me, or maybe it is the college where the course was available in my region.
I went with the expectation of training/insight for the role of IT Support Specialist. But I was very disappointed with the course presentation which seems like it was coordinated for failure.
"Funded by the American Reinvestment & Recovery Act of 2009, the consortia of 82 community colleges was designed to offer six-month training courses for as many as 10,500 students each year."
Our course was cut to 2 1/2 months, without even a focus for HITPRO IT Support Specialist exam. They passively crammed us with 17 components of in class slides, and none-existent online clases. At the end of this frustrating process, they expected to successfully complete a final like if we did a semester of studying.
It was far from hands-on, we weren't allowed to even install openvista in a virtual machine, for our HIT installation component.
There is a serious disconnect with the applications thought in the classroom as to the proprietary applications used in medical Establishments.
Then you find out the only way to learn the proprietary application is to either:
Work for the vendor.
Work for a medical establishment where it is being used.
Or, hopefully be working for a consultant that implements the application.
In my region you cannot even get an internship through the REC, because they only cater to providers who are paid members, and minimal coordination with the college.
After you complete the course, how long are you suppose to wait, in suspense, to know if you are eligible for the voucher or not.
It is more than a month now since I took my final exam, and still waiting the get this information.
I hope this is not the norm at other colleges in other regions.
Like they say, "You get what you pay for"
Diana Strong say: not all created equal
March 11, 2012 | 04:30 AM GMT
Many Community colleges in the 82 member consortia have begun to actively work with their respective recs and local healthcare facilities to provide internships but some are not. The nation was divided into 5 regions (A,B,C,D,E) and it looks like region E is not going to help. Maybe ONC should step in and direct the participating colleges that received government funds to assist them in securing some internship to gain some experience so they will meet the requirement that new hires have hands-on experience.
Susan Balk say: New Interdisciplinary Health Informatics Degree at UNC Charlotte
February 27, 2012 | 20:35 PM GMT
The program being developed at University of Michigan sounds like the new PSM-Health Informatics degree being offered at University of North Carolina at Charlotte. They've offered a Certificate program for the past few years and the new degree program - a combined initiative of the College of Computing and Informatics and the College of Health and Human Services - will begin Fall 2012. I have applied to this program after finding it's one of only a few in the country.
Leslie Bentley say: Is the federal program delivering?
February 27, 2012 | 12:09 PM GMT
I graduated from the HIT Project Implementation Manager class in February 2010. I was in the first class at the community college. I have certifications as a HIT Implementation Manager and HIT Implementation Support Specialists. My teacher went above and beyond what was required to be taught. A couple of complaints that my class mates had is there was no college credits for passing the course. The college did not actively seek out and work with business to find us apprenticeships (paid or unpaid). The college did not work with local business to actively seek out jobs for us that graduated. From talking with my teacher, some colleges were proactive, did seek out apprenticeships so the students could work while they were taking the class or after they graduated. Some colleges did give college credits for completion of the course.
Jojo Pornebo say: CalREC
One of the other disconnect here is that there was a grant for the students and there was a grant for CalREC to provide assistance to clinics. However, CalREC is not providing the graduate students the information of who are the clinics that actively need an EMR. Instead CalREC has their own lineup of approved software vendor list and EMR implementor list (who had paid to registered their name as an approved implementor). It seems that the government gave a grant to an external entity and using the project for their own business purposes.
There are two ways a graduate can dive directly and immediately onto Health IT and EMR implementation:
1. They work for an EMR software company, in which they have to learn a specific EMR brand.
2. They offer to become implementation managers for clinic EMR installations. The clinics do not know anything about EMR and a software implementation. This is what the graduates learned after finishing the course(s). Otherwise, the clinic will have to be provided a project manager by the EMR software vendor of which will have a bias towards the vendor.
Jojo Pornebo
HIT Graduate - Practice Workflow and EMR Implementation
hitman@lagunarty.com