HHS releases $84M to boost healthcare IT workforce

By Bernie Monegain , Editor, Healthcare IT News | April 5, 2010 | 9:58 AM

Some of the nation's leading universities, community colleges and research centers will receive $84 million to advance the widespread adoption and meaningful use of healthcare information technology.

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius announced government awards on April 2 to 16 universities and junior colleges to support training and development of more than 50,000 new health IT professionals.

Additionally, Strategic Health IT Advanced Research Projects (SHARP) awards totaling $60 million are being provided to four advanced research institutions ($15 million each) to focus on solving challenges that represent barriers to the adoption and meaningful use of health IT. The SHARP awards were announced in an e-mail from David Blumenthal, MD, national coordinator for health IT.

Funded by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, the awards are part of a $2 billion effort to achieve widespread meaningful use of healthcare IT and provide for the use of an electronic health record for each person in the United States by 2014, Sebelius said in a statement.

"Training a cadre of new health IT professionals and breaking down barriers to the adoption of meaningful use of health IT are both critical to the national effort to use information technology to realize better patient care," said Blumenthal. "The institutions receiving awards today will develop necessary roadmaps to help healthcare providers and hospitals implement and effectively use electronic health records."
 
Workforce Award recipients, by program area, include:

Community College Consortia Program ($36 million)

The Community College Consortia Program provides assistance to five regional recipients to establish a multi-institutional consortium within each designated region. The five regional consortia will include 70 community colleges, each of which will create non-degree training programs that can be completed in six months or less by individuals with appropriate prior education and/or experience. First-year grant awards are estimated at $36 million. An additional $34 million is available for year two funding of the programs after successful completion of a mid-project evaluation.

The five recipients are:

  • Bellevue College, Bellevue, Wash. – $3,364,798
  • Cuyahoga Community College District, Cleveland – $7,531,403
  • Los Rios Community College District, Sacramento, Calif. – $5,435,587
  • Pitt Community College, Winterville, N.C. – $10,901,009
  • Tidewater Community College, Norfolk, Va. – $8,492,793

Curriculum Development Centers ($10 million)

The Curriculum Development Centers will develop educational material for key health IT topics to be used by the members of the Community College Consortia program. The material will also be made available to institutions of higher education across the country. One of the centers will receive additional assistance to act as the national training and dissemination center for the curriculum materials.

The five recipients are:

  • University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, Ala. – $1,820,000
  • The Trustees of Columbia University, New York – $1,820,000
  • Duke University, Durham, N.C. – $1,820,000
  • Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Md. – $1,820,000
  • Oregon Health & Science University, Portland, Ore. – $2,720,000 (Will also receive the NTDC award).

The list continues on the next page.

University-Based Training Programs ($32 million)

The University-Based Training Programs will produce trained professionals for vital, highly specialized health IT roles. Most trainees in these programs will complete intensive courses of study in 12 months or less and receive a university-issued certificate of advanced training. Other trainees supported by these grants will study toward Masters' degrees.

The nine recipients are:

  • The Trustees of Columbia University, New York – $3,786,677
  • University of Colorado Denver College of Nursing, Denver – $2,622,186
  • Duke University, Durham, N.C. – $2,167,121
  • George Washington University, District of Columbia – $4,612,313
  • Indiana University, Bloomington, Ind. – $1,406,469
  • Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Md. – $3,752,512
  • University of Minnesota, Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minn. – $5,145,705
  • Oregon Health & Science University, Portland, Ore. – $3,085,812
  • Texas State University, San Marcos, Texas – $5,421,205

Competency Examination Program ($6 million)

This program will support the development and initial administration of a set of health IT competency examinations. The program will create an objective measure to assess basic competency for individuals trained in short-term, non-degree health IT programs and members of the workforce seeking to demonstrate their competency in certain health IT workforce roles.

The one award goes to:

  • Northern Virginia Community College, Annandale, Va. – $6 million


Strategic Health IT Advanced Research Projects (SHARP) program ($60 million)

The SHARP program recognizes the critical importance of research to support improvements in the quality, safety and efficiency of healthcare by creating "breakthrough" advances in information technology. The SHARP program targets four areas where improvements in technology are needed.

The four SHARP award recipients, their areas of research focus and funding are:

  • University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Ill. – Security of Health Information Technology, developing security and risk mitigation policies and the technologies necessary to build and preserve the public trust as health IT systems gain widespread use. $15 million.
  • The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston – Patient-Centered Cognitive Support, harnessing the power of health IT so that it integrates with, enhances and supports clinicians' reasoning and decision-making. $15 million.
  • President and Fellows of Harvard College, Boston – Healthcare Application and Network Platform Architectures, developing new and improved architectures that will leverage benefits of today's architecture and focus on the flexibility and scalability needs for the future to address significant increases in capture, storage and analysis of data. $15 million.
  • Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minn. – Secondary Use of EHR Data, strategies to make use of data that will be stored in EHRs for improving the overall quality of healthcare, while maintaining data privacy and security. $15 million.