The HIT Workforce Training Program is an online, six-month non-degree training designed to provide a qualified pool of workers with either a medical or Information technology body of knowledge to ensure the adoption of the electronic health records (EHRs), Information exchange across health care organizations, and the redesign of workflows within health care settings to gain the quality and efficiency benefits of EHRs, while maintaining privacy and security of medical Information.
The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) has funded the Health IT Workforce Development Program. The goal is to train a new workforce of health IT professionals who will be ready to help providers implement electronic health records to improve health care quality, safety, and cost-effectiveness.
The goal of the Community College Consortia funded under this program is to educate health IT professionals that can facilitate the implementation and support of an electronic health care system.
In all, the community colleges in the program hope to train more than 10,500 new highly skilled health IT specialists by 2012.
