EMR Spending In Healthcare Makes a Big Impact On Finance and IT Hiring

Many hiring managers and candidates in Finance, Accounting and IT are unaware of the tremendous impact that Federal Healthcare stimulus and the implementation timeline are having on IT, Finance and Accounting hiring across all industries. The groundswell of healthcare hiring in these areas is creating tremendous demand for certain skill sets and making these candidates highly sought after.

Driving this undercurrent of rising demand is The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA). This act includes a health IT program that has been allocated more than $17 billion. This subsidy money is being provided to healthcare organizations in the form of grants or reimbursements for implementing Electronic Medical Record (EMR) packages. Some of the popular EMR systems are Epic, McKesson, Cerner and MediTech.

In addition to the subsidy dollars, there is a very aggressive implementation timeline requirement. Originally planned with a 2014 deadline, the timeline will likely be extended to 2017 or beyond. This translates into a demand for talent for a minimum of 6 years, but the demand will likely not decline precipitously after that. It's creating an industry-specific Y2K-type bottleneck.

There is such high demand because healthcare organizations are rushing to be compliant. The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is forcing hospitals to become compliant with "meaningful use" of the EMR system. This means many things, but the focus is on automating records and allowing all providers to share the same patient record amongst each other.

Other factors already in place are the HIPPA and changing ICD-9 payer codes – the code providers use to get reimbursed by insurance – to ICD-10, essentially adding digits. These transitions are very expensive and most US providers have not yet upgraded to the ICD-10 system, which is already in use in most other developed countries.

Baby boomers moving toward retirement were already going to tax the healthcare system – which was traditionally under-automated. So the next 4 to 6 years will require significant hiring in the healthcare industry. This creates a vacuum as healthcare organizations hire IT and Finance professionals from non healthcare industries.

On the finance side, medical coders and billers are in high demand. These are professionals that have general accounting, clerical or billing experience.

There is a trend of doctors closing their practices and becoming employed or more closely affiliated with hospitals. Their practices also have to be compliant and many cannot afford the expense or do not have the experience and time to make this happen. Coupled with the rising cost of malpractice insurance, the need for compliance is causing many smaller practices to become folded under the hospitals. This includes the smaller community hospitals. That means the medical billing, coding and back office accounting function in the smaller offices are now being moved to centralized mega-plexes. The medical billing and coding is also more complex with federal regulation and oversight, leading to the need for a higher skill level and a higher knowledge base. These finance and accounting professionals are also one of the power users of the EMR software products for the revenue cycle/patient billing component.

For IT professionals the demand is even more acute, verging on almost explosive demand. The skills being gobbled up are clinical systems business analysts, project managers, software configurators/builders, trainers, and interface developers/programmers (such as HL7).

This is being driven by one of the following:
1. New implementations (hospital has no previous EMR and is implementing for the first time)
2. Legacy EMR systems need to be converted because it either does not fulfill the "meaningful use" requirement or it is not integrated
3. Re-installs because the current version is not compliant – these are almost like brand new implementations because the update is so major in the enhanced capability and change

Some of these healthcare organizations have had IT departments that are mostly staffed by clinicians with limited IT skills. However, the new EMR products are so sophisticated in process and work-flow that many of these organizations need to change their staff make-up and hire more technical staff. Many of these departments have never been through a major system upgrade, so they do not have the project management experience, necessitating the hiring of project managers from other, non-healthcare industries.

The demand for trainers has also reached a fever pitch. This had already been a neglected area, but in this new environment, the training skills could be the most important of all. If the healthcare providers are not adopting the use of the software, they will not be compliant under the "meaningful use" requirement. Clinicians, (i.e. Dr.'s, Nurses, Pharmacists, etc.) are accustomed to manual processes. Because EMRs are automated, training is such a coveted skill set that these organizations are hiring people with all types of adult education training – from software trainers to teachers and former teachers.

Here at Partner, the impact is evident in the significant rise in job orders from our clients across all industries – the direct demand in healthcare and the indirect as workers from other industries transfer into healthcare. The savvy employers are recognizing that even though some areas of the economy have not recovered, there is a groundswell in these Finance, Accounting and IT areas. Non healthcare employers need to recognize this early as we enter an age of robust growth - companies that are selling their organization to high demand candidates should understand that it's no longer a buyer's market and will now require a more proactive approach.

If you are a candidate looking for a new opportunity – whether you are currently in healthcare or not - there are some universal truths to consider. While there is somewhat less demand for programmers due to off-shoring, for example, this new shift has created demand for programmers that can integrate third-party software and ERP applications using EAI/middleware tools. Project managers, business analysis, training and EMR/ERP package support is going to be in very high demand for the foreseeable future. Highly specialized F&A professionals will find that specific knowledge of EMR/ERP packages will be just as important as F&A experience in billing and coding.

Whether you are a hiring manager or possibly a candidate looking for a new opportunity, being proactive and aware of the influence healthcare hiring is having on the global market place, will give you a distinct edge.