The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) in the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) have announced the availability of two additional grant programs to support the training and development of the skilled workforce required to support broad adoption and use of health information technology (health IT).
Authorized by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), the new grant programs will award $32 million to establish university-based certificate and advanced degree health IT training programs and $6 million to develop a health IT competency examination program. These awards, together with the previously announced $80 million in workforce program grants, recognize the critical importance of developing a well-trained health IT workforce to support the adoption and meaningful use of health IT.
“To realize the widespread adoption of EHRs and achieve the vision of a transformed health system that health IT can facilitate, the workforce needs to be expanded and properly trained to facilitate rapid uptake of health IT by healthcare providers,” said the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology, Dr. David Blumenthal. “The workforce development program is expected to generate highly skilled professionals in key roles to meet 85 percent of the estimated need for expansion of the health IT workforce, who will in turn support healthcare providers and hospitals implement and maintain electronic health records and use them to strengthen the delivery of care.”
Information about the HITECH grants available through the workforce development program is available at http://HealthIT.HHS.gov/ and www.grants.gov.
