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Training Plans for a New Health Care Info Era

By May 25, 2010January 14th, 2019No Comments

Kirkwood receives major Federal grant, part of regional and nationwide program

Kirkwood Community College will soon launch a training program to boost skills and advance careers in health information technology. A grant from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services will put more than a half million dollars toward training programs for IT professionals in hospital, clinical and other health care settings.

Kirkwood is one of 17 community colleges across the Midwest putting the training program into action. The grant provides $512,000 in Kirkwood support for two years of training sessions. The educational program will focus on non-credit, short-term training.

Cuyahoga Community College of Cleveland, Ohio is the lead institution in the Midwest portion health care information training project. The total grant award to the 17 Midwest community colleges totals $36 million, with an overall goal of more than 50,000 new health IT professionals in the workforce by mid-2012. The larger scope of this grant includes 70 community colleges across the U.S.

A key part of the Kirkwood program will be “train the trainer” projects, getting qualified personnel ready to build skills in a number of other locations. Key employment areas to be developed in eastern Iowa include:

• Implementation support specialists, providing on-site user support before and during implementation of health IT systems in clinical and public health settings. Previous work backgrounds for these workers include information technology or information management.

• Technical/software support staff, who will maintain systems in clinical and public health settings. These skills will include patching and upgrading of health IT software. These workers could also have a previous background in IT or information management.

• The program will also emphasize trainers, who will design and deliver training programs, using adult learning principles, to employees in clinical and public health settings. These training leaders could have previous experience as health professionals or health information management specialists.

Kirkwood Health Occupations Director Mike McLaughlin will oversee the HHS grant over the next two years. He says the program will “get the front-line troops ready” for major advances and changes in health information processing.

“Changes in health care laws will bring big changes in how medical records are kept and communicated across the country. There is going to be a tremendous ongoing need for people to learn how to develop, maintain and use electronic health information systems,” McLaughlin said. “This funding will allow us to get a team of qualified, prepared trainers active across our region and make these advances and changes more manageable across our whole health care system.”

McLaughlin said the Kirkwood train-the-trainer programs will get professionals ready in six months or less. Coursework will be presented at Kirkwood, supplemented by online materials. Kirkwood expects to prepare about 75 trainers a year, or 150 by the summer of 2012. The entire Midwest consortium expects to train more than 5,400 individuals in that time period.

“This will be short-term, non-credit training. We seek to bring in IT people with no health skills or background, and on the other side, health care people with no IT training. This could provide new career opportunities for both areas to move to a career field we expect to grow very quickly,” McLaughlin added.

Consortium officials expect the continued need for health information technology workers to boost demand and course development in HIT college credit programs in pace with these health care administration needs. Kirkwood has taught Health Information Technology courses for nearly two decades.

More information on the new Health Information Technology training program is available from McLaughlin at (319)398-4947, or via e-mail: mike.mclaughlin@kirkwood.edu