On Monday, Health Resources and Services Administration Administrator Mary Wakefield announced an agreement between HRSA and the U.S. Department of Labor to train students at community and technical colleges for health IT jobs at hospitals and clinics in rural areas, Modern Healthcare reports.
Agreement Details
HRSA and the Labor Department's Employment and Training Administration -- along with HHS' Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT -- plan to use existing resources to train students because the agreement does not authorize funding for the initiative.
The agencies seek to develop a health IT workforce that can adequately support the technological needs of rural communities.
The agreement aims to:
- Increase enrollment in health care IT workforce training programs;
- Persuade educational institutions to provide professional health care IT training; and
- Distribute existing health IT curricula that meet potential workers' goals.
According to an HRSA spokesperson, HHS seeks to train 10,500 students by March 2012 through the Community College Consortia program and 1,700 students by July 2013 through the university-based training program (Zigmond, Modern Healthcare, 2/21).