John Tricas said he heard opportunity knocking and learned networking software two decades ago, when it was the next big thing. Now he senses a similar opening as the health-care overhaul law takes effect.
In September, the 56-year-old information-technology worker took a job troubleshooting issues doctors, nurses and other users are having with a new government-funded electronic-records system at a Raleigh, North Carolina, health-care company.
Normally I wouldnt have taken this, because I have done things at a higher level, Tricas said of the recruiting call for the position. But I said, Ill take it because that gets my foot in the door.
With President Barack Obamas re-election ensuring that his 2010 law will be implemented, companies are scouting for workers like Tricas to fill hundreds of thousands of jobs in everything from running records systems to creating and servicing new insurance exchanges and entering thousands of additional codes for health-care treatments.
The federal government projects that under the law, 30 million more Americans will start getting coverage in 2014 through expanded state Medicaid programs or private insurers, or pay a penalty. A study published this month in the Annals of Family Medicine found that the newly insured will contribute to rising demand for medical services, requiring an estimated 8,000 more doctors over 12 years. They also will create jobs for workers in support fields such as IT, already in short supply.
Its across the entire landscape, said Guillermo Moreno, vice president in Kissimmee, Florida, at Manpower Inc. (MAN)s Experis Healthcare Practice unit. Its a growing concern and a growing issue. Theres huge fracture at all levels.
On the IT front, health-care systems, data companies and other industries in need of talent all are competing for the same workers, he said. The U.S. economy may create as many as 758,800 new computer and IT jobs, a 22 percent increase, from 2010 to 2020, the Bureau of Labor Statistics said in its outlook on job growth, released in March.
A growing portion of those tech positions will be in what the BLS calls health care and social assistance, which will account for about 28 percent of all new jobs in the U.S. economy by 2020. The industry, which includes public and private hospitals, nursing and residential-care facilities, and individual and family services, may increase by a third, or 5.7 million new jobs, twice as many as any other industry, the report said.
Looming deadlines and federal funding add urgency. The shift to electronic medical records is being driven by $20 billion in stimulus spending. In 2015, Medicare reimbursement rates will be cut by 1 percent for doctors not meeting the federal standards for those records.
Responding to demand, the industry is re-educating workers for the new IT requirements, said Norma Morganti, executive director of the Midwest Community College Health Information Technology Consortium. Morganti, based at Cuyahoga Community College in Cleveland, coordinates one of five regions in an 82- school federally-funded national effort.
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Tech Workers See Opportunity as Health-Care Law Kicks In
