This week, both of my twin nieces changed their majors to the health care field–one to paramedics, one to OR technician. Despite the fact that they are twins, they made their decisions independent of one another. But why did they make these choices? Both young women are very concerned about getting educated quickly and getting a job when they graduate. I recommended that both of them be sure to include courses on health information technology, which led them to ask, “Is health information technology a good career choice?” My response, “Well, it sure can’t hurt!”
Who need courses on HIT?
Health information technology is defined by Wikipedia as providing:
“the umbrella framework to describe the comprehensive management of health information across computerized systems and its secure exchange between consumers, providers, government and quality entities, and insurers. Health information technology (HIT) is in general increasingly viewed as the most promising tool for improving the overall quality, safety and efficiency of the health delivery system (Chaudhry et al., 2006). Broad and consistent utilization of HIT will:
- Improve health care quality or effectiveness;
- Increase health care productivity or efficiency;
- Prevent medical errors and increase health care accuracy and procedural correctness;
- Reduce health care costs;
- Increase administrative efficiencies and healthcare work processes;
- Decrease paperwork and unproductive or idle work time;
- Extend real-time communications of health informatics among health care professionals; and
- Expand access to affordable care.
Interoperable HIT will improve individual patient care, but it will also bring many public health benefits including:
- Early detection of infectious disease outbreaks around the country;
- Improved tracking of chronic disease management; and
- Evaluation of health care based on value enabled by the collection of de-identified price and quality information that can be compared.”
I’m thinking this sounds pretty important to ANYONE hoping to enter the health care field. In fact, it seems unlikely that your resume will rise to the top of any health care career pile without some decent knowledge of HIT.
Is health information technology a good career choice? YES!
So, is health information technology a good career choice? YES! And I hope my nieces will both take my advice and be sure to take courses on HIT, regardless of the path they choose to take in health care.
At AES, we recognize this, and so we are about to begin developing new content on HIT. I’m looking forward to being able to say, “Yes! We have that! We have health information technology lesson plans!”
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