Community colleges to receive grants for health IT worker training

The nation's health information technology coordinator announced Tuesday that his office will provide $80 million in grants to help in training skilled health information technology professionals who can work with hospitals, doctors and other providers in adopting health information technology.

David Blumenthal, the Department of Health and Human Services' national coordinator for health IT, said $70 million of the funding would go to about 70 community colleges, grouped in five regions around the country, to provide non-degree training in health IT, which could be completed in six months, and $10 million will go toward developing educational materials to be used by the colleges and others. "Ensuring the adoption of electronic health records, information exchange among health care providers and public health authorities, and redesign of workflows within health care settings all depend on having a qualified pool of workers," Blumenthal said in a statement.

In a conference call, Blumenthal said there needs to be an increase in skilled health IT workers to help doctors and other health professionals become "meaningful users" of health IT. He said the nation currently is short about 50,000 workers in this sector. Blumenthal's deputy, Charles Friedman, said he expects the initiative will result in about 10,000 newly trained health IT professionals each year. Blumenthal also discussed the new blog his office launched to provide information about health IT and allow for public input on the issue.