Blumenthal: Conversion to EMR will create 50,000 new HIM jobs

The healthcare industry will need at least 50,000 new health information management professionals to support the transition to electronic health records, national health IT coordinator Dr. David Blumenthal says. Speaking at the AHIMA conference last week in Grapevine, Texas, Blumenthal indicated that his office would announce a workforce training initiative in the next several months to support a nation of "meaningful users" of health IT.

AHIMA officials expressed hope that training would lead to more people choosing health IT as a career rather than simply creating an army of hired guns for EHR implementation projects. "We don't need people in six-month EHR implementation roles," Linda Kloss, AHIMA's CEO said, according to Healthcare IT News. She would prefer that Blumenthal and his peers at HHS take steps to expand the current network of 270 accredited programs for health information management so people don't end up with jobs that "dead-end" their careers.

For further information on Blumenthal's statement and AHIMA's reaction:
- read this Healthcare IT News story

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