In Search of the Health IT Experts

Healthcare industry leaders discuss the shortage of staff with information technology expertise, the impact on hospitals and health systems, and what can be done to address the situation.

This article originally appeared in the June issue of HealthLeaders magazine.

The lack of IT staff with expertise represents the top challenge leaders face regarding their IT group.

Where in the IT group are you finding these shortages, what is the effect on the organization, and what can leaders do to address that?

Jack Kolosky
Executive vice president and COO
H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center and Research Institute
Tampa

On finding the right people: Even with a higher-than-expected unemployment rate, the issue of trying to find really qualified people who understand the program and who are willing to stick with it through all the trials and tribulations and difficulties in implementations is challenging.

A staffing problem across many industries: We thought we might have been unique in healthcare, but we spoke with one of our board members who runs a major corporation and she was saying the same thing about her business. We all agree that information technology and the usage of it—being able to mine the data—is critically important to our businesses. But we really need to have our schools and our infrastructure—be it government or whatever else—step up and help accelerate the idea of recruiting people into this field.

On building partnerships: We are looking at partnerships with some of the major schools, much as we did in nursing and other areas where we had critical shortages, about helping us to recruit and continually train new qualified people.

On the effect of IT staff shortages: To be perfectly frank, I wish we were able to turn out more people who are qualified and can think outside the box and be a little more innovative. We have a great group here. We just don't have enough of them. We obviously get the job done but it seems to take us longer or we can't do some of the innovative things we'd like to do.

Sam J.W. Romeo, MD
CEO
Tower Health & Wellness Center
Turlock, Calif.

The evolution of healthcare technology is behind the curve. It will be self correcting for two reasons: There are an increasing number of physicians who are becoming technical themselves and there are technical people who are beginning to learn the physicians' language.

The biggest barrier is we have third-party and other people including Medicare that basically are saying these are the priorities and they distract us away from the patients and toward the payer mechanisms. That is important because if you don't get paid you can't take care of patients. But it seems like we are putting a whole bunch of balls in the air at the same time and we don't have enough technical people to be able to communicate across those bridges to be able to do it with any efficiency.

We are fixing it. I'm an old man. I am a family doctor for 50 years but I have six children, five of whom as physicians are working on this and who are electronically savvy and much of the culture is different. That is a big transformation. They are head over heels involved in creating software that will support documentation of what happens in the examining room so we will have a relational data base so we can do some things that are meaningful in terms of quality and not just meaningful in terms of payment.

Deborah Gaspar
Chief Nursing Officer
Memorial Hospital Sweetwater County
Rock Springs, Wyo.

We can't recruit skilled health system administrators who understand how the programs interconnect and how they connect to server capacity and how they connect to wireless capacity; how they are upgraded becomes an issue. This needs to be addressed industrywide

Nursing has always had to deal with shortages and we've learned how to train our own and that is what is going to have to happen in healthcare IT.

The IT people are pretty frustrated about it, too, because so many of the IT people don't have leadership abilities. They don't know how to problem solve. And the people they report to in the organizations often don't have competencies doing that problem solving. So I do think there are going to be more clinical people who delve into that role because it's going to be necessary.

We have a couple of RNs who built our clinical system. They are both in their 20s and they are much more competent and capable at that stuff than I am. I can do the clinical background and the clinical standards and the high-level stuff and they do the technical skills-based stuff. We're creating our own solutions. You have to survive so you do what you have to. Give people the abilities because there are people out there who want to do this stuff. You have to be patient and willing to groom them.

Glenn McElroy
Executive Director
Columbia (Mo.) Surgical Associates Inc.

It is pretty easy to find the guy who can handle the complex hardware networks within the office. However, the complex software—and the nuances and constant updates that are associated with each, often unfixing things you fixed last week—gives you constant new challenges, and finding someone who has a handle on both hardware and EMR is very difficult. I am not sure I know anybody who is really happy with their EMR and practice management products as they interrelate.

It is self-correcting somewhat with the younger doctors coming up, but in the short term we aren't going to outgrow it. It is the switchover from the texted base to a data-based EMR that is throwing everybody for a loop. That consternation is going to lessen as more of the old guard who are used to dictating verbal notes either retire or give up and get on a computer and figure out how to make it work. The younger docs coming up are very familiar with messing with computers and can't think of any other way to do it.