Portland Community College | Portland, Oregon

PCC’s Health Informatics Award fills jobs demand

Photos and story by James Hill

Using grant funds from the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, Portland Community College is doing its part to train a portion of the projected 51,000 health information technology workers needed nationwide by 2014.

These workers will be required to support the transition by health care industry from paper to electronic databases.

PCC and four other Oregon community colleges (Blue Mountain, Lane, Mt. Hood and Umpqua community colleges), as well as other colleges around the country, are helping with the rate in which the health care industry converts to electronic health records. The consortium was awarded a two-year, $625,000 seed grant of federal stimulus dollars to target individuals with health care or information technology backgrounds to help fill the projected worker gap. Under the new health care reform bill passed by Congress in 2010, medical offices, hospitals and clinics have federal incentives through 2014 to convert their medical records from paper to electronic.

In the Northwest region, colleges plan to train 2,400 workers per state and 300 students per institution in this field. PCC’s Health Informatics Concentration of Study Award is a joint project between Washington County Workforce Development and the college’s Health Information Management and Computer Information Systems programs. Part of the award program, which is offered online, is to target 100 incumbent workers for retraining or updating of their skills.

“The Office of the National Coordinator for Heath Information Technology wanted to improve the effectiveness and quality of health informatics training,” said Paul Wild, project manager of the award program based at the Willow Creek Center. “Five universities around the country, including our own OHSU, designed the training and now there are 84 community colleges around the country involved in the delivery of it. This is a jobs activity. We want to get as many people employed as we can.”

Karl Wilson of Beaverton is the first in the program to get a job. He had left his previous information technology position last summer and spent the latter half of 2010 looking for another job. Through Worksource Oregon, which operates a location out of the Willow Creek Center, he found out that the health informatics field was a hot one for job seekers. When an orientation for the new award program came up at Willow Creek, Wilson was one of the first to sign up, earning a Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) scholarship in the process to pay for his classes and books.

“Being at Oregon Worksource, I got e-mails on programs they had and one was on the orientation at Willow Creek,” said Wilson, who earned a bachelor’s degree in computer science from Willamette University. “They talked about this new award they were developing for people with a strong IT background and who wanted to flesh out their health care background or had strong health care background and wanted to improve their IT skills. I have some health care background already, but I’ve never worked in a hospital. It was all on the health care information side.”

Using his own deep experience, Wilson started the online award through PCC in January and recently was hired by Providence Health & Services to work as an analyst in their health information management department.

“I’m the first in the program to get hired,” he said. “I’ve been seeking a job since July and now I got my dream job.”

Going forward, Wild said there would be a significant demand for qualified health informatics professionals like Wilson as medical facilities design, install, use and maintain electronic health records.

“We have to be nimble in our approach,” Wild added. “Community colleges are adopting this training to serve a need. It’s what we do. It will grow and continue to grow in the future. This program model will certainly be a model for future training.”

For more information on PCC’s Health Informatics Concentration of Study Award, contact Paul Wild, Health Informatics Manager, at (971) 722-2893.