Feds To Help Train 50,000 Health IT Workers 212
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Soulskill
from the bears-need-time-off-too dept.
from the bears-need-time-off-too dept.
Lucas123 writes "The US Department of Health and Human Services is spending about $144 million on grant programs at more than 80 colleges and universities to help fill a void of about 50,000 workers for IT jobs in the healthcare industry. The workers are needed to help hospitals, physician practices and other healthcare entities to roll out electronic medical records, which the government is promoting through the use of reimbursement funds for those who implement EMRs and penalties for those who don't. The Health IT courses are set to begin this fall in five regions around the US and are aimed exclusively at workers who have previous IT or healthcare experience."
yeah, sure is a lack of unemployed IT types (Score:5, Insightful)
How often must the government / industry claim there is a lack of qualified workers in some field before people just laugh and wonder who wants to bring down whose salary?
How about giving them loans for training which are paid back as part of their salary once they've secured a job?
This is corporate welfare. (Score:5, Insightful)
Were at Wal-Mart 2.0, now any job can be paid by government instead of the employers themselves.
Re:yeah, sure is a lack of unemployed IT types (Score:3, Insightful)
Wouldn't bringing down salaries for IT workers in the health care industry reduce health care costs? Isn't that basically what the whole debate was about with regards to health care "reform" was about for the last 2 years? They need more IT people to support moving everything to computers, but that means they can pay them less at the same time, as there's a larger supply than demand at that point. Makes sense to me, even if it sucks. But not my industry, so meh.
Re:yeah, sure is a lack of unemployed IT types (Score:1, Insightful)
Everybody needs to eat. Skilled workers also need to pay for their training, and those who devote extra years to studying where they could be earning pay on that time only do so under the promise of a better living. If you don't pay people what they're worth, then of course you are going to end up with a shortage of willing workers - that is exactly the problem we face now. Nobody is going to go through university to live in a studio apartment and take the bus to work.
Re:drug testing? (Score:2, Insightful)
Knowing him has made me more in favor of the employers right to test for drugs (as part of the employment contract).
I'd really like there to be some sort of disincentive for him being high as a kite (or recovering) whilst he is working on medical equipment that may be keeping someone alive.
there is no shortage... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:drug testing? (Score:4, Insightful)
Windows != IT (Score:3, Insightful)
Making it a general programme for people with health care experience will work. Getting even into an entry level medical job entails around 6 years of school plus at least a year or two of work experience. There are exceptions for some specialties, like phlebotomy, where the training period is shorter. Even then it still is not knowledge that can be faked or made up for in a few months of side reading. However, legitimate IT backgrounds, if present in a small ratio, can provide skills and insight not available to those who have spent years getting domain expertise in medicine.
What can kill the project dead, dead, dead is if people with Windowz Skillz are allowed to pose as IT workers. Microsoft products have little to do with IT except that they are placeholders blocking legitimate, functioning protocols, formats, applications, and operating systems. The kind of slug that tries to make a living of of Microsoft products lacks the ability to analyze and solve problems. They're usually either rote memorization monkeys or sales marketeers. The bullshitting and lying that accompanies both the rote monkeys and the marketeers ends up costing lives when it happens in clinics and hospitals, especially when the ongoing Windows disasters [theregister.co.uk] collapse the hospital.
In most cases it is easier to add beginner, basic 'IT' skills to people with domain expertise than it is to try to shoehorn people without medical training and experience into the job. That and it's easier to just throw out all closed source rather than waste resources culling just the Microsofters.
Re:This is corporate welfare. (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes and no. It looks like most of these will fund training for technical schools which are, as the /. crowd already knows, basically worthless for actually being productive in IT, and probably won't help you get a job. (The stories of people who went into debt to go to one of these schools, hoping to get an IT job but becoming just as unemployable anyway.
What's worse, as those who get e.g. "Cisco certification" know, it can tell employers that, "This applicant knows enough to destroy your system, but not enough to get anything done."
The best that can happen is that this will just become some "checkoff requirement" -- doesn't help you with your job, but doesn't hurt either, just wastes time.
More money down the shithole. If it's welfare, it's welfare for the worthless colleges that keep rooking the unemployed.
Re:drug testing? (Score:4, Insightful)
There is a major difference between being presently intoxicated (which would be grounds for firing anyway) and having had a smoke in the past couple of weeks (which a drug test could yield a positive from.)
Re:drug testing? (Score:4, Insightful)
this is anecdotal at best and really speaks out more about your friend as a person than it does the effects of the drugs on him....
Re:drug testing? (Score:4, Insightful)
You are an asshole. Did it ever occur to you that there are people (myself included) that have NEVER used illegal drugs and yet refuse to be drug tested because it is a violation of our privacy and almost always with no probable cause?
1) You also have no idea what else they are testing for
2) You have no idea what information is shared and to whom
3) There is a absolute possibility of false positives that could ruin your reputation
Drug testing is evil, period. Legal drugs (such as alcohol and prescription drugs, even over-the-counter meds) can be just as debilitating. Even sleep deprivation can cause severe performance problems. And those that do choose to use a illegal drug on their own time don't necessarily affect their on-the-job performance.
If a company wants to ensure their workforce is not "impaired", then they should test for impairment through some type of coordination, response time, or mental exercise. Or perhaps even through observation of performance.
Re:yeah, sure is a lack of unemployed IT types (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:there is no shortage... (Score:5, Insightful)
I think your label of "government handout" is very presumptuous.
Re:$3k/worker (Score:4, Insightful)
EMR is absolutely awesome, and with regards to the government push for it: it's about time.
I'm assuming your "unconstitutional" comment is with regards to privacy. I'm also assuming you have no idea how things currently work.
The concept behind EMR (Electronic Medical Records) is simply taking your medical data, previously filed on paper, and instead storing it on a computer. All the previous privacy regulation (mostly HIPAA) applies, as well as extra regulations (HITECH). The information is still behind firewalls and physical locked doors. The biggest operational difference is that now third parties (like insurance providers, pharmacies, specialists, labs, researchers, etc.) can get access to your data much faster, once they have enough credentials.
In the days of paper, a third-party representative would have to come into the hospital, go to a big room full of paper, stand there making copies of the records they need, then go back and have someone transcribe them all into a computer. For a while, all your data would be carried in a briefcase down the street, easily available for theft. Among the data the third party needs is a lot of other information they don't, but since it's on the same form, they see it anyway.
Now with EMR, the third-party computer system can just connect to the hospital, and supply their credentials to gain access. At the hospital I work with, that means two rounds of username/passwords, plus a physical token. That's far more secure than simply needing a hospital badge and a good excuse. The records are pulled by request, so there's no extra information given. If the third party (like a pharmacy) doesn't need to know about your religious preference (kept by the hospital in case they have to call for last rites), they simply don't get it. Once the electronic medical data's in transit, it's also more secure. There's no briefcases to grab here. Instead, there's an encrypted connection inside an encrypted VPN. When the data arrives at the third party's office, it's easily formatted for their system, with no extra people staring at it.
All in all, EMR is far better than old processes. It's faster, more reliable (think of the stereotypical doctor's handwriting), and more secure.
Re:yeah, sure is a lack of unemployed IT types (Score:1, Insightful)
Isn't it hilarious that all the people who talk the most about the free market, and the efficient market, and the beauty of the market are the same people who think the market FUCKED UP when it decided that programmers are expensive?
Re:The government focus on healthcare is troubling (Score:5, Insightful)
A cut in healthcare expenses puts just as much capital in consumer pockets as a tax cut. Arguably, unlike the tax cut, it puts the capital in the consumer pockets that are likely to need it.
Consumers then spend that money, into the productive economy but without screwing up a budget surplus.
Re:yeah, sure is a lack of unemployed IT types (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:This is just the rise of evil diploma mills (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Digital records are NOT a good thing (Score:3, Insightful)
So what happens to those notes? Are they copied into a permanent record? Are they made available to anyone who needs them? Or are they ignored, as in the case of my father, who suffered an allergic reaction to a surgical disinfectant, because his allergy information was compared (by a human, mind you) against the list of materials to be used, and they missed that one note?
Paper records are great for recording notes that the doctor never wants to see again. Anything that might be useful in the future should be put into electronic form, and kept ready for use in an emergency.
It sounds like your doctor is just following the normal computer-using routine: using Windows, logging out when leaving the room, hunt-and-peck typing, et cetera. If you want to complain about something, go complain to the people who recommend those kind of systems. The doctor could carry around an always-logged-in laptop and take some typing lessons, and you'd see a huge improvement in the time usage. EMR isn't the problem.