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“By empowering the staff members to be part of a team that can integrate these processes, the office can become more productive while improving costs, quality, and access to health care.”


more productive while improving costs, quality, and access to health care.”


Experts in EHR implementation A robust and appropriately trained HIT workforce is necessary as physicians work to qualify for meaningful use in- centive payments, says James Turley, PhD. The Centers for Medicare & Med- icaid Services (CMS) set meaningful use criteria that physicians must meet to re- ceive incentives. Physicians can qualify for up to


$44,000 in Medicare incentive payments from 2011 to 2016 and up to $63,750 in Medicaid incentive payments from 2011 to 2021. Penalties for failure to demonstrate meaningful use of an EHR exist under the Medicare incentive program but not under the Medicaid program. Medicare payments to physicians decrease by 1 percent in 2015, 2 percent in 2016, and 3 percent in 2017. Possible cuts will continue up to 5 percent by 2019 if 75 percent of office-based physicians do not achieve meaningful use. To view the meaningful use rules and


• Health information privacy and secu- rity certificate: a program designed for UT Austin computer science stu- dents; and


• Public health leader certificate: train- ing in public health informatics de- signed for employees of the Texas Department of State Health Services.


Of the $5.4 million awarded to the


PURE-HIT consortium by ONC, UT-Aus- tin’s College of Natural Sciences received $2.7 million to develop the certificate programs, designed to educate 179 stu- dents in the next three years. Dr. Field says the inaugural summer certificate program included six weeks of didactic and simulation-based train- ing, followed by a two-and-a-half-week practicum experience offered at multiple sites in Austin and around the state. UT Austin graduated its first class of 54 students in July 2010. Graduates took part in professional on-site job in- terviews and received ongoing support from a career expert to help them suc- cessfully find employment. Within eight months of graduation, 92 percent of


58 TEXAS MEDICINE July 2011


graduates seeking employment in HIT found jobs with HIT vendors, health care organizations, consulting compa- nies, and government agencies. Dr. Field says the summer certificate


program was the first in the nation to graduate students from an ONC-funded program and place them in jobs. The nine-week certificate program


will be repeated this summer and fall, with the goal of educating up to 100 students prepared to enter the workforce before the end of 2011. The College of Natural Sciences also is rapidly develop- ing professional education programs for physicians, medical professionals, and veterans, and for others seeking creden- tials to enter the HIT field. Dr. Field says HIT adoption affects a physician’s clinical, administrative, and support staff. That’s why, she says, staff members need to understand the capabilities of the new technologies and the ways they can improve practice efficiency.


“By empowering the staff members to be part of a team that can integrate these processes, the office can become


to register for the incentive programs, visit the CMS website, www.cms.gov/ EHRIncentivePrograms, or TMA’s online Federal Stimulus Package Resource Cen- ter, www.texmed.org/hit. The UT Health Science Center at


Houston offers a Master of Science in Applied Health Informatics that allows graduates who complete 36 semester credit-hours to assess, implement, main- tain, and evaluate EHRs and health in- formation systems. The program is available online. Full- time students can complete the program in one year and part-time students can complete it in two years. Prospective students can apply for a federal schol- arship that covers 60 percent of tuition and fees and provides a $15,000 stipend. Scholarships are still available for Sep- tember admissions. Dr. Turley and Juliana Brixey, PhD, both faculty members of the School of Biomedical Informatics, say the master’s program offers practical EHR training that benefits physician practices. “All of the courses in the program re- quire students to complete a variety of


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