To meet current growth trends in health IT systems and maintenance, the number of IT workers in the field must increase by 37 percent, says professor of health informatics at Oregon Health & Science University, William Hersh. Looking at current numbers, Hersh found 108,000 full-time HIT works in U.S. Hospitals.

All careers related to health data systems design, maintenance, and mining, including systems technicians and chief medical-information technology officers (CMI-TOs), are in a demand increase phase. This also includes, of course, HIPAA-related IT and compliance officer positions.

This fall, St. Louis University’s Doisey College of Health Sciences in St. Louis, MO will add a master’s degree program in informatics, says Jody Smith, chair of health informatics and information management at the school.

Nurses and physicians are migrating to HIT, according to Bonnie Siegal, a vice president with the health care recruiting firm Cejka Search Inc. Physicians are often found acting as CMI-TOs while continuing their medical practices. Nurses, on the other hand, tend to leave that profession to acts as chief nursing-information technology officers. Both professions can pay into the six figures, with CMI-TOs making upwards of $500,000.

Read more: Techies find niche in health care field

Aug. 8, 2008: QuadraMed CEO Keith Hage, one day after signing a 15.8 million contract with Los Altos Hills, Calif.-based Daughters of Charity Health System, rang the NASDAQ closing bell. The bell comes also one day after QuadraMed unveiled its Smart Identity Exchange, or Smart I/X, a software system QuadraMed says is designed to integrate patient information for medical facilities.

Smart I/X uses a probabilistic algorithm to identify, reconcile, and manage patient records is described by QuadraMed as “a valuable tool for organizations aiming for HIPAA compliance.”

Hagen said: “Smart I/X significantly improves an IDNs ability to deliver consistent and cost-effective high quality care by providing physicians immediate access to comprehensive patient information to help them make more informed and safe decisions at the point of care. In addition to efficiently unifying individual patient’s historical and most current information, Smart I/X enhances enterprise-wide care coordination and minimizes duplicate and overlapping records, all of which reduce unnecessary tests, treatments and medical errors.”

It is unclear at this time what information is available to whom on this system. Patients may want to inquire of their lawmakers how HIPPA laws are applicable to system-wide availability of private medical information across the medical-worker spectrum.

Read more: http://www.silobreaker.com/DocumentReader.aspx?Item=5_888804371 and

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/5931497.html.

In Electronic Healthcare Record (EHR) news: Aug. 1, University of California, San Francisco health economics professor Robert Miller estimates the cost of implementing a nationwide EHR at $150 billion. Hospitals, Miller says, will need to invest $35 billion of that to purchase and expand systems and $55 billion to maintain and operate them over eight years. Hospital IT spending is currently not in line with other industries, Millers says, and the increase for EHRs would put it closer.

Miller’s figures differ from earlier Rand Corporation and Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates, which themselves differ. Proponents assert that health IT systems, including EHRs, could shed light on best practices, effectiveness of treatments, disease trends, and save money over the long hail. However, in its June report, the CBO said, “By itself, the adoption of more health IT is generally not sufficient to produce cost savings,” adding that the future economic benefits of health IT systems are uncertain. Additionally, questions remain about maintaining HIPAA compliance.

Drawing numbers from a recent report in the New England Journal of Medicine, Miller said that fewer than 5 percent of US doctors are currently using EHRs. Equipping the other 96 percent would require $15 billion in initial cost, and another $24 billion increase to physicians’ operating costs.

Read more: http://www.govhealthit.com/online/news/350496-1.html