As our economy begins to turn around, the US government is making it known through decreasing unemployment rates and publicity of the number of new jobs being created. According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), employment in the healthcare sector is expanding. In December 2010, the BLS reported a gain of 36,000 jobs in the healthcare industry. A portion of these are health information technology positions.
A recent edition of HIMSS Vantage Point found that:
- Nearly three-quarters of respondents, who represent provider, vendor, consulting and other work sites, hired IT FTEs during 2010.
- Another two-thirds have the budget to hire additional IT FTEs in 2011.
- Clinical informatics professionals and implementation experts are the two areas for which respondents anticipated that their organization would need to hire staff as the industry transitions from traditional, paper-based records to electronic health records.
While this is great news for clinical informatics professionals, the bad news is studies are finding newly formed clinical informatics positions are difficult to fill. Global consulting firm, Hay Group, found that 47% of healthcare organizations report challenges with recruitment, retention or both. This inability to find the right staff is affecting practices’ abilities to handle future work. In fact, sixty percent of the HIMSS survey respondents indicated that their IT projects would be slowed down because appropriate staff couldn’t be hired.
With so many hospitals and practices planning aggressive EHR implementation plans this year, these staffing challenges can be a huge roadblock. So what is a practice to do when they can’t get the clinical informatics resources they need? Hire a third party vendor like ScanSTAT that’s already equipped with the right staff to handle facilitation of your conversion to EHR. Our highly-trained staff is HIPAA Certified can analyze your scanning needs, provide equipment and labor savings and truly become a value added partner in your implementation process. Hiring ScanSTAT for your clinical informatics staffing needs also provides your practice with significant savings in training, turnover and labor expenses.
Contact ScanSTAT to discuss how we can help you with your EHR conversion efforts today.