Anthony Guerra MUST READ: Part I of my interview with KLAS Pres Adam Gale. We talk of HITECH, Epic and other good stuff

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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.

Job Transition, Outplacement Services etc

Received an email today from ere.net on www.transitionconcierge.com/contact.php. Makes a lot of sense.

Bigger corporations often spend money on outplacement services for laid off employees. I've always viewed these with skepticism; it often seems more like a means of counteracting the negative PR for the company than a valuable service for the displaced employee. Help you re-write your resume, or as the article says, go to group therapy or grief counseling sessions? As the article notes, the best way to avoid grief and frustration is to find something great, fast. And transitionconcierge evidently focuses on funneling job leads to the employees to act on. A more practical approach perhaps.

The main thing is for the laid off employee to get busy, and land something, even if interim, fairly quickly, before frustration sets in, and before the process leads to self-doubt and depression.

Many of the outplacement firms are simply organizations, including recruiting firms, looking for somewhere to cash in on the recession, since recruiting or other revenues have taken a hit. How much value they actually deliver to the employees is debatable. To answer that, we'd need to know how many people they really helped find jobs. In reality? probably very few.

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.

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