Over the next 18 months, our college plans to train 300 people to specialize in health information technology.Over time, this will make trips to your family dentist simple, in an effort to keep personal electronic health information secure and relevant.
Personal health information must also be easily understood. When your pharmacy accesses prescriptions from a physician, your condition, health-care provider and plan is given corresponding medical codes.
The Health Information Technology Project (or H.I.T. Project) will streamline this information into one code, easily understood by every health-care provider.
“The intent of H.I.T.,” as IT Administrator, Lucia Francis sums up, “is to keep a transfer of health info secure, portable and seamless for benefit of the patient.”
The H.I.T. Project is, in part, supported by a grant offered through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.
The act is better known as the president’s economic stimulus package, aiming for the creation of new jobs.
The grant from H.I.T. is being awarded to 84 colleges across the nation by the Department of Health and Human Services. MATC has a very reputable history in job creation, enabling us to be one of those 84 colleges.
Associate Dean and Project Leader of H.I.T, Dr. Richard Ammon, realizes this new grant, “gives MATC an opportunity to align a curriculum with local and national need.”
Response from H.I.T.’s project management to local and national need is the offering of 4 certifications. Job descriptions in these same 4 disciplines are as follows:
?Technical and software support will provide continual system upgrades.
?A clinician or practitioner consultant must have technical capabilities, with an up-to-date license in delivering patient care.
?Support professionals that implement electronic health records will “troubleshoot” before and during IT systems installation.
?Practice Workflow and Redesigning deems specialty of re-organizing operations for medical code. Those qualified in workflow and redesigning will only use data pertinent to the patient. This is with respect to patient privacy.
The Practice Workflow and Redesigning curriculum has a class that is known as Quality.
Quality deals in updating current systems by rigorous filtering to keep track of current medical transcriptions.
Much of the other coursework in Practice Workflow involves evaluation of existing standard operating procedures. Efficient conversion from older to newer electronic health record systems is taught throughout the certificate’s coursework.
Ammon asserts that patient security of personal health information is priority number one. “It is first taught as bedrock in our introductory course, then throughout every class for every certificate.”
This is with special regard toward the obligation of every healthcare worker. These professionals may view private health records only if it completes his or her occupational task. To do otherwise may risk a large federal fine, imprisonment, or both.
An important restriction of the H.I.T. grant requires previous experience in either health care or information technology. Ammon strictly specifies IT experience for most classes. Previous technical or health care experience lifts students’ need for taking any related pre-requisite.
The Associate Dean has advice for all of his students to reduce anxieties of falling behind.
“Not just anyone can sign up for these courses. You have to hit the road running because your work is non-entry level.” Ammon also added that employment is not necessary during, or after, course completion.
Dr. Ammon describes classroom experiences much like a “package of elements that build one on top of the other.” Faculty will make use of prior course material learned from before. Each certificate is earned after 6 months with completion of 12 credits. Long after the federal grant’s expiration, health IT administrators hope to continue their project.
H.I.T. Project Coordinator, Laurie Kohel, and Ammon both foresee their program’s utility 30 years from now. “It is only just beginning. But my gut tells me that there will be an unending need of what our project offers through service maintenance and upgrades,” Ammon stated.
Grant acquisition also secures feedback from an advisory committee to those responsible for the H.I.T. project.
The advisory committee expresses local and national issues to serve our school. The local issues are addressed in evaluations from places like physicians’ offices, Aurora Health Care or the Wisconsin Department of Health. Ammon has faith in evaluations delivered to him by the committee and uses them to meet local, state and national demand.
Preliminary feedback from the U.S Bureau of Labor Statistics evaluates the need for health IT workers being 51,000 positions short 5 years from now. The figure helped convince Congress to create a grant devoted toward health information technology. There have been suggestions that this is not an actual, but only an expected, forecast.
However, Ammon still vouches for the Recovery Act to “push delivery of high wages to the highly skilled being trained within a short span.” Motivations of Ammon, Kohel and others are strictly to get those students with these qualifications practicing in their field within 6 months.
After September 27, Health Information Technology will be the newest program offered throughout multiple campuses or online. If interested in these health or IT careers, please visit the website link
http://bit.ly/cMU8dK for pre-admission into 1 of 4 fields. Admissions are then set to a month-to-month basis thereafter.
