The US government has done a lot to mainstream the use of Electronic Health Records. Everyone in the HIT and healthcare provider spaces talks about Medicare and Medicaid incentives that have garnered the attention of the US healthcare world. Doctors are eager to understand EHR certification and Meaningful Use, to qualify for their incentive payments, and discover how an EHR will improve their clinical workflow.
EHRs will not be used solely by providers though and successful implementation will rely on an estimated 51,000 skilled workers over the next five years. The lesser talked about portion of the HITECH Act is funding for the rapid expansion of HIT degree and certificate programs throughout the country. Although these programs don’t have a sexy $44k label attached to them, they are an integral component to successful EHR adoption.
So where do we stand with HIT training? Millions of dollars were awarded to develop comprehensive HIT curriculums that will be used by five consortiums of community colleges and universities across the US. Curriculum development has progressed steadily and community colleges and universities across the country are actively recruiting and training students. The problem is that these community colleges have varying degrees of access to EHR platforms that they can use to train their students.
Dr. Bob Hoyt, Co-Director of the Medical Informatics Program at the University of West Florida, who uses Practice Fusion for his program, compiled an informal survey of informatics programs at HIMSS. Shockingly, many of these programs either didn’t have access to an EHR or could only access open source EHRs for training purposes. Imagine trying to learn an essential tool without ever having hands-on experience with it!
The reason that these programs have limited access is cost. Most EHR vendors charge community colleges and universities alike for access to their tool. This is logically the consequence of the legacy EHR model, but educational institutions need access to high quality EHRs.
Practice Fusion has solved this challenge. By partnering with community colleges and universities around the country, Practice Fusion offers HIT students throughout the country the chance to engage and interact directly with an EHR. In this sense, Practice Fusion is supporting not only providers seeking their $44k incentive payment by offering a high quality product at no cost, but it is also supporting providers by ensuring that their future staff will have the hands-on skills required to effectively operate an EHR.
Practice Fusion is aggressively investing in the future HIT workforce in a way that few other EHRs can or will do. The result will be strong academic partnerships that yield talented and prepared professionals to support rapid EHR adoption.
Thomas McMennamin
Health Policy Manager
Practice Fusion EHR
