Prepare for U.S. job surge in the health IT field

According to Charlotte Huff , writing for workforce.com, with $19 billion dollars earmarked for computerizing the United States’ medical records, an IT hiring surge is just around the corner. Experts say such hiring should begin in earnest by early 2010. And since the federal stimulus bill includes financial penalties for facilities that do not comply beginning in 2015, the hiring of IT pros who can install and troubleshoot systems should be fast and furious.

And if you consider that, at present, just 9 percent of hospitals use electronic records on even a limited basis, there’s a lot of work to be done.

Of course, many leaders aren’t acting until they see what happens with health care reform and the passage of key health IT regulations. But then it appears that it will be full-steam ahead.

What tech groups will be in the most demand? As I said, those who can install systems and those who can troubleshoot those systems will be in demand. Also, security architects will be in demand what with the privacy concerns inherent with storing and sharing personal medical data. Some experts are also saying that cloud computing specialists will be needed in order to store huge amounts of data over the Internet rather than on individual servers.