I recently came across this really interesting Wall Street Journal blog post. In it a recent college graduate gives a nice rendition of the challenge of changing from student to employee. Turns out, this newly minted graduate has found work at the popular healthcare IT software company: Epic.

Of course, the fact that Epic is hiring a recent college graduate should come as no surprise to anyone in the EMR and healthcare IT field. Epic has long been a haven for new graduates since their hiring practices seem to favor training new blood as opposed to hiring experienced EMR practitioners.

However, reading the above post made me think back to when I first got hired for a job working with an electronic medical record. This part of the blog post really hit home (emphasis mine):

Starting Aug 1, I will be calling Madison home. As a project manager for Epic Systems, I will be working with hospitals from start to finish on implementing health care information technology. This position is a wonderful opportunity to work in a young, fast-paced environment with a high level of independence, not to mention a fair amount of travel (which is perfect for an adventurous 21-year-old). Best of all, the ability to help improve patient care, create better processes and in general aid hospital systems is just the kind of feel-good work I was looking for at the beginning of my job search. Preparing to work every day on a beautiful and themed campus that is sure to leave any architecture buff or Indiana Jones fan speechless, I couldn’t be any more excited to begin this next chapter.

While I’m sure we could have a fascinating conversation about some of the points this girl makes about working at Epic, the part in bold took me back to when I had a similar vision.

I remember all too well telling so many people that I was going to have the opportunity working with an EMR to transform the way someone’s healthcare would be provided. I mean, I had the chance to be able to possibly even save people’s lives.

Turns out that I haven’t thought too much about this perspective in the last 5 years. Sure, I guess it’s always in the back of the mind. The focus on patients has always been paramount for me. I believe I truly have made the patient experience and patient care better in the work I’ve done.

Maybe time has just jaded me to too many things and the romance is gone. Certainly I still could be helping to save lives. I guess sometimes the minutiae of what we call work gets in the way of remembering the bigger picture of what’s possible. Maybe that’s why Epic is smart to hire so many recent college grads.

As many of you know, I get a lot of interesting emails. I generally try to respond to all the emails I get. In many cases, the topics work great for a post on this blog and will extend the discussion beyond the email. This is one such case. The following is an email from a student in one of the HITECH funded healthcare IT education programs and my response to them (published with permission). I’ll be interested to hear what others think about the topics we discussed and if you have any other suggestions for Jojo.

I would like to ask your opinion about what will the graduates of the HIT education grant do after fiishing the 6 month course ?

I am one of these students and I want to freelance after. I have 13 years of IT experience and none of heallthcare (except for my medical appointments where I make my own process workflow analysis). As for me, I have not seen much of IT companies specializing in HIT, in the Northern Sacramento / Placer county region. HIT does not even ring a bell to them, I think. IT companies know about Windows, Office, VMWare, networking, Sharepoint, etc. but not HIT. HIT is an old lurking industry given prestige nowadays because of the HITech act and the $19 billion fund. In 2 more months I will finish the HIT grant school and nowhere to go.

I want to plan ahead. So, I looked at the NorCal REC and I see that they have pay-for registrations for IT providers (IT companies). The IT provider list is supposed to be a match for clinics wanting to implement EMR. I look at these IT provider’s website and I don’t see much information about what they do for HIT. So, how does a REC know that an IT provider knows how to do HIT ? Sure IT companies know the IT part of HIT but not necessarily the H part (for healthcare). This was the same notion I have before I was a HIT student. How hard can HIT be ? Not until I went through the HIT education prgram then I understood that it is not as easy as I thought. HIT is much like specialty field of IT (akin to doctor specializing to a specific field of study).

Therefore, I may have to freelance; capture the smaller niche market in my rural region. Test the waters, apply my learned skills and grow from there. Yes, I would want to satisfy the HITECH goal of building a HIT workforce. But I do not have any information as who is out there (clnics wanting an EMR and HIT providers). My only assumption is that by the end of two years, ONCs calculation is that there will be about 10,500 HIT professionals nationwide. It does not seem to be a lot considering that the California REC is expecting about 10,000 clinic registrants.

The REC is not catering to the upcoming HIT workforce. At least , I have not seen any projects or system that will provide information for a HIT professional that will be graduating this March. I would imagine that a HIT professional should be able to login to the REC website and browse a list of clinic that matches his locality and expertise. Something like that will justify the fund given out for the HIT education.

What do you think?

Jojo Pornebo

My email response was the following:

Hi Jojo,
You bring up some interesting points and thanks for sharing. Are you sure you’re looking in the right places? I don’t know your area of the country that well, but I know a couple IT vendors here in Las Vegas that do a ton of healthcare IT support. Although, you shouldn’t be confused by their website. Many have healthcare as a strong area of focus, but don’t necessarily put it on their website. In fact, in some cases I’ve seen them put the EMR part of their company as a separate company so as not to confuse their existing IT clients.

I’d also suggest you see if there are any VARs in the area you want to work. Many IT companies become VARs for specific EMR vendors and so you could leverage both your IT and healthcare IT skills with a company like this.

Also, I’m not sure it’s best to rely on the RECs. I talked with an IT vendor today who said that he referred people to our local REC for meaningful use and they were suppose to get referrals back for IT support. Yet, he hasn’t gotten any referrals from the REC (yet?). I’d look beyond the RECs which have a limited life anyway if I was in your shoes.

Your training could apply beyond IT companies and the RECs. You could work for an IT vendor itself for example. You can also find full time employment with a specific clinic. Many medium to large size clinics have full time IT support. It’s a great alternative to working for an IT company since you get to know the clinic very well and can effect change over a long period of time. Of course, hospital IT departments also need a lot of skilled healthcare IT employees (and may have the most shortage).

There are lots of options out there. What really matters is you deciding which career path you want to take. Working for an IT company, a hospital, a clinic, an HIT vendor or freelancing for yourself are all viable career paths with their own unique pros and cons.

You could also check out my EMR and EHR job board. It has a number of possible job options so you could see some of the types of healthcare IT related jobs that are out there.

I hope this helps.

Note: Please feel free to share your thoughts for Jojo in the comments. If you have a job for Jojo let me know in the comments or on our contact us page too and I’ll be sure to connect you.

You’ll have to excuse the lack of serious content in many of my posts this week or so. It’s the holidays and so traffic is down. So, I’m not spending as much time creating other content since many people won’t get to see it anyway. Plus, I’m heading to California to visit some family as well and it looks like I’ll have to try and borrow the neighbors wireless if I want internet. Should be a nice digital break to enjoy the beautiful California weather. That said, I do have a number of great posts in store for the new year and will probably schedule a few this week while I’m away.

I did want to take a second to highlight the new EMR job board that I created. You can read my full writeup about the EMR job board. Since creating the EMR and HIPAA job board, I’ve seen a number of other EMR or healthcare IT related job boards around. They were a ton more expensive than mine. I’m not sure if that means I should raise my price or not, but for now I’ll leave it where it is.

I was interested to see how well an EMR job board did on this site. I think I have a strong niche with many people asking me about EMR jobs. Plus, there’s going to be a lot of people looking for qualified EMR sales, implementation and consultants as ARRA really starts to heat up. So, I wondered if anyone would really look at the EMR and HIPAA job board.

We had our first job posted for an “EMR-EHR Sales Consultant – EMR Implementation Specialist” by 1st Providers Choice about 6 days ago. In that time the specific job page has already had 33 77 views. I think that’s a pretty decent number of views for only paying $15.

What do people think? Any suggestions on how I can make the job board more useful? I’m also happy to talk with people about doing some bulk posting of jobs if you have a number of jobs you want posted. Let me know your thoughts. Don’t be shy.

One of my most common questions on this site is where people can go to find EMR jobs. My first response is usually to direct them to the EMR and EHR job page on the EMR and HIPAA wiki.

Now, I’ve decided to create an EMR and HIPPA job page for those interested in finding or listing an EMR or EHR related job. I’ve added a widget in the right side bar of EMR and HIPAA that lists the latest EMR and EHR related job listings. This same widget will also be posted on my other site EMR and EHR. It will be interesting to see all the different types of EMR jobs posted there.

Right now the cost to list an EMR job is $30 for 90 days. However, to get things kicked off and in the spirit of the holiday season, you can post an EMR job for only $15 if you use the discount code “emrjobs”. This discount will last for the next month.

If someone’s interesting bulk pricing, feel free to drop me a line on my Contact Us page.

I was reading through this blog post describing the staffing challenges that face the healthcare IT and EMR industry in the coming years. I’ve read and written quite a bit about the looming crisis in filling qualified healthcare IT and EMR jobs. However, the above blog post does a nice job of looking at it from a number of different angles. Not the least of which is the challenge of retaining staff as demand for those qualified staff members increases.

I’d love to hear more about what companies are doing to retain the good, qualified and experienced healthcare IT people in their organization.

While we’re at it, let’s hear what EMR vendors are doing to prepare for the EMR implementation/training backlog which is likely to happen. In this regard, you might read the response by SOAPware’s president to my interview question about this subject as well. I’d love to hear about other unique training and implementation models that EMR vendors are employing.

I’ve talked about a number of EHR and EMR job websites in the past. I guess I’m so interested in the subject, because I’m doing my own search for a new job (possibly an EMR/EHR job).

During my search for the right Healthcare IT job (hopefully doing something with a great EMR or EHR implementation, I’ve found a number of other jobs related to EHR and EMR. Here’s the list of healthcare IT related job sites to add to my previous list (linked above):

Healthcare IT News Job Listing – A website listing a number of Healthcare IT jobs and many EMR jobs available. The site is run by Healthcare IT news.

HIMSS JobMine – Job list sponsored by HIMSS with a bunch of HIT categories of jobs.

med IT jobs – The best set of search features of the ones listed. Categorized by job, company, etc.

Check out the entire list of EMR, EHR and HealthcareIT job sites on the EMR/EHR and HIPAA wiki.

If people know of other EMR and HealthcareIT job sites out there, please let me know and I’ll add them to this post.