Hiring Forecast

We may beginning to see the first signs of the uptick I've been anticipating all year.

Referring to some of my earlier posts, the ARRA/HITECH initiative has unfortunately seemed to have had the perverse impact of further slowing down hiring in the HIT field, as healthcare providers slowed hiring not only due to general economic/budget challenges, but also due to an understandable need to 'wait and see' on the eventual criteria for stimulus monies, aka the 'meaningful use criteria' and other specifics surrounding the reimbursement.

As those issues are gradually being clarified, we seem to be seeing some of the providers beginnning to move forward with their plans. The short version; it appears that CPOE in some fashion will be the 'meaningful use', so those that have system rollouts underway are beginning to adjust their plans and schedules to achieve that end as soon as possible.

The result should be a strong surge in hiring around EMR specialist types, particularly in areas around pharmacy, physicians, nursing, meds, ordering and CPOE over the next 2 years.

Hopefully we'll be laughing in 12 months about how crazy it's gotten vs. how slow it has been the last 6 months.

ARRA HITECH Impact on HIT Hiring

There are some signs the slowdown in HIT hiring the first half of this year may be coming to an end. July 1, the official start of the 2nd half, seems like an appropriate time to be finally making note of some improvement.

The first half has been kind of ironic; 2008 was a boom year, and with all the hoopla around ARRA, HITECH, EMR stimulus, etc, we've been expecting things to take off again, the question has been when.

We're seeing some signs of increased activity with our clients, not huge, but across a number of them, which is hopeful. We expected the initial increase to be in needs for resources to help with research and planning around EMR's, not the typical upgrade and rollout resources that are typically in such high demand, and this appears to be bearing out. It may yet take a while for the increase in EMR applications professionals to rebound completely, but it appears it's coming. And with the tight deadlines to receive the complete funds, we don't expect it to take long to ramp up.

Hang in there.

ARRA Math

EMR's are big projects. Implementation projects in general and enterprise projects in particular, are usually going to follow a process that goes something like this:

Start to think about needing something new
Begin looking at options
Formalize a more specific group to begin evaluating needs and products
Develop list of potential applications
Investigate
Short list
Demos
Negotiations/Selection or Selection/Negotiation
Form project team
Develop project plans
Hire additional resources
Execute project plans (often in phases)
Remediate issues
Repeat
Stabilize/upgrades
Ongoing support

In order to qualify for the full monies in the ARRA, facilities need to have a 'meaningful use' EMR up and running in less than 2 years.

The above list of activities will easily take 2 years (actually longer) for any decent sized medical group.

Ergo, if you are not already well underway on this list, you've already missed the boat. Which means those that have been working on EMR deployment plans have a chance to get some additional money. Those that haven't been, will have to be extremely aggressive to get it done in time to obtain all the potential funds available.