HAMPTON ROADS, VA – Tidewater Community College (TCC), one of five health IT education consortiums in the U.S., is launching its Health Information Technology (Health IT) Workforce Development Program next week.

To kick off the six-month HIT program, college officials said “critical” orientation sessions will be held on Sept. 28 and 29 from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. at the Advanced Technology Center, TCC Virginia Beach Campus.
 
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) selected TCC to lead a consortium to educate as many as 7,500 information technology professionals in healthcare in a 12-state region over the next two years through a grant for $16,017,608. The TCC-led region has 25 percent of the U.S. population – more than 75 million people – one of the largest regions in the initiative. TCC is coordinating the collaboration of more than 100 community stakeholders and 22 other community colleges to provide training needed to establish or expand health IT systems.

Leading educational partners in the TCC consortium are Sentara Healthcare, Eastern Virginia Medical School and Virginia’s Statewide Health Information Technology Regional Extension Center.

TCC’s program will be offered in evening classes and will be free for the first cohort accepted into the program  (up to 150 qualified students), officials said.

The program focuses on unique skill sets for first-ever jobs in health IT, identified at the national leve

• Practice workflow redesign specialist
• Clinician/consultant
• Implementation support specialist
• Implementation manager
• Technical/software support staff
• Trainer

“These are skill sets that never existed before,” says Gretchen LeFever, TCC’s new director for the HIT consortium. “And the people accepted into our first session will be pioneers among a select group across the United States.”

Click here for more information on the program.