By Healthcare Facilities Today

Growth in the health information technology workforce will be necessary for the widespread adoption of electronic health records called for by the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) provisions of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, according to a study posted to Wiley Online Library. 

Healthcare Technology Online reported that the study, "Tracking Labor Demand with Online Job Postings: The Case of Health IT Workers and the HITECH Act" drew from 84 million online help wanted postings (to) create a dataset of 434,000 health IT–related job listings from 2007 to 2011 whose descriptions contain key phrases such as ‘electronic health record’ or ‘clinical informatics. 

The study found that health IT–related job postings have tripled as a share of healthcare job postings since 2007. According to the article, further analyses suggests health IT–related job postings accelerated following HITECH and the legislation was associated with an 86 percent increase in monthly postings, or 162,000 additional postings overall.

According to an article on Health Data Management, it will remain to be seen how strong the job market remains as the HITECH incentives wind down, although HIT will continue to be a cost of doing business in healthcare.

Read the article.