Issue link: http://viewer.e-digitaledition.com/i/316362
HEALTHCARE INFORMATICISTS, HEALTH INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY (HIT) PROFESSIONALS, CODERS, BILLERS, QUALITY ASSURANCE SPECIALISTS AND OTHER HEALTH INFORMATION WORKERS ARE EXPERIENCING BOOMING JOB PROSPECTS. T HE FEDERAL BUREAU of Labor Statistics (BLS) reports that med ica l records a nd hea lt h information technician posi- t ions g rew by 22 percent in 2012 , adding 186,300 jobs, and can expect much-higher-than-average growth in the future. BLS also reports that job growth for medical transcriptionists remained steady at 8 percent, while job growth for fi nancial clerks (all industries, including medical billing) and receptionists (all industries, including medical front-offi ce staff) was average. Meanwhile, a study in Industrial Relations: A Journal of Economy and Society found health IT positions tripled as a share of healthcare-related job postings from 2007 to 2011. These trends — occurring as electronic health record (EHR) implementation has accelerated — are not new phenomena. But neither are the statistics in all the studies in full accord. As long ago as 2009, the Medical Group Management Association (MGMA) reported that the ratio of IT staff per physician increased by 0.13 full-time employee following EHR implementation. Yet in contrast with BLS' fi ndings, MGMA found medical records staff dropped from 0.34 to 0.19 full-time employee per physician. As BLS data does not segment front-end clerical and billing roles by industry, federal numbers in those fields do not reflect the medical field exclusively. Nonetheless, the discrepancy is interesting: Is the medical fi eld shedding some information-driven roles while adding others? Sorting the Data Mike Hoaglin is Medical Scholar- in-Residence with Practice Fusion, a healthcare platform that developed a free, Web-based model for EHR technology. He has seen a transformation in medical clerical roles. "[M]any are becoming more important," Hoaglin says — adding, however, that "traditional jobs involving paper workfl ow are certainly being phased out in certain settings … ." He notes that medical transcriptionists may now take on the job of scribes, typing notes into an EHR during patient EHRs: encounters. Another new position, care coordinator, is fl owering as a result of the need to demonstrate patient-centered medicine, especially in practices that are part of accountable care organizations. Bottom-line Considerations On balance, while front-end staff may be diminishing in number, it looks as though highly trained health information and HIT specialists are increasing. For example, in October 2013, the American Board of Preventive Medicine offered the first Clinical Informatics board certifi cation exam, suggesting demand for such services is rising. So as the people who deal with patient data become better trained, what is the likely effect on a practice's payroll? According to the Health Information Management Systems Society, HIT pro- fessionals enjoyed a median annual salary of $95,000 in 2013. However, Hoaglin notes, medical information management f unctions are being delivered more effi ciently even as the complexity of the required expertise grows. Cloud-based EHR and certain practice management platforms lower IT overhead, he says. "This collective power of technology and expertise reduces the need to staff certain individual roles in every practice," Hoaglin adds. "This takes a huge cost burden off individual physicians and gives everyone access to the best-in-class, highly trained professionals." ■ An Uncertain Impact on Staffi ng By Jennifer Webster CORE ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ +++ + +++ + ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ PRACTICE MANAGEMENT M D N E W S . CO M ■ MD NEWS Greater Boston | 5