Shortage of IT staff to affect healthcare industry
By siliconindia   |   Saturday, 09 October 2010, 00:40 IST   |    1 Comments
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Shortage of IT staff to affect healthcare industry
Bangalore: The shortage of IT staff in the healthcare industry has become a concern of chief information officers, says a survey. According to a survey from the College of Healthcare Information Management Executives (CHIME), more than 70 percent of the CIOs said their organizations had inadequate IT staff to implement clinical application software, while 51 percent believed that the staffing issues may affect their ability to implement electronic health record (EHR) systems. Ten percent of respondents said the health IT work force shortage would definitely have a negative effect. The survey, which has responses from 182 member CIOs of CHIME, found that 70 percent of the respondents have concern about retaining existing health IT staff and 50 percent of respondents said they don't have sufficient funds to increase IT work force in 2011. CIOs from smaller hospitals had the lowest percentage of vacant health IT support positions, while larger hospitals had a higher percentage of open positions, the survey found. The most vacancies were for positions related to clinical software implementation and support staff, including: analysts, application co-ordinators, information staff, project managers, report writers, technical writers and trainers. More than one-third of respondents are consider using third-party consultants to address immediate staffing needs. Some of the CIOs are also planning to health IT training to staff from within their organization.