Industry Insight

Official Says Skilled IT Talent is Fundamental to EHR Success

In a recent keynote address at a University of North Carolina Greensboro (UNCG)-hosted conference, an official from the U.S. Health Information Technology Research Center noted there are 30,000 healthcare organizations in the country planning or implementing a move to EHR technology over the near term. Having the right IT talent is fundamental to their success.

“The talent can reside within the organization or with a vendor, a regional extension center, or an academic center,” said Ned Ellington, PhD, director of the Health Information Technology Research Center in the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology. “But you need someone skilled in technology to align the processes you need with your organizational strategy.”

Ellington was speaking at the Second Annual Conference on EHR Implementation organized by the UNCG McDowell Research Center, an organization that supports and stimulates the use of IT in North Carolina and around the globe.

“The conversion to electronic health records is driving a boom in healthcare information technology jobs,” said Eric Ford, PhD, a Forsyth Medical Center Distinguished Professor at UNCG who helped to organize the conference. “Most experts believe there will be tens of thousands of positions to be filled over the next five years.”

The UNCG Bryan School of Business and Economics now offers a graduate certificate program to prepare students for jobs in the fast-growing HIT management field. The program will launch this fall and will be delivered entirely online. Students will take three required classes and one elective, all scheduled so they can be completed within a single calendar year.

— Source: UNCG Bryan School of Business and Economics

 

TRS Institute Announces New Name, Website

TRS Institute, a healthcare documentation services and training provider, has announced a new name and website.

TRS Institute will now operate as the training and workforce development arm of the American Healthcare Documentation Professionals Group (AHDPG). Company CEO Peter Reilly says, “The new name was developed to reflect and communicate our belief that it is the people—the clinicians, nurses, medical language specialists, medical billers and coders and medical scribes—who are the foundation of our healthcare system today.”

According to industry experts, there is a 40% to 50% shortage of health information workers, and the deficit is expected to grow by an additional 20% over the next five years. By bringing an innovative training and workforce development team together with a quality outsourcing services team, the AHDPG offers hospitals, physicians, community colleges, and industry service providers an economical means to train the additional staff they need to fill these roles. Reilly says this also makes AHDPG the only online training and workforce development company where students can come learn and have an opportunity to work.

— Source: American Healthcare Documentation Professionals Group

 

Academic Medical Center Expands Relationship With CodeRyte

CodeRyte, Inc, a supplier of natural language processing (NLP) technologies, has announced that the Duke University Health System has expanded the scope of its relationship with CodeRyte to broaden the use of computer-assisted coding in multiple areas of the health system.

Central to the CodeRyte expansion was the strength of the company’s computer-assisted coding technology, anchored by NLP. Duke initially selected CodeRyte and began the go-live process this year to provide coding in radiology, inpatient surgery, and pathology. The growth of the relationship centers on emergency department coding as well as vascular interventional radiology, evaluation and management clinic reports and observation, and various cardiovascular services.

— Source: CodeRyte