WASHINGTON, D.C. — Today Congressman David Wu reintroduced legislation to train workers for well-paying jobs that will help modernize and improve health care.

Health care currently is one of the only sectors of our economy that doesn’t widely use information technology to streamline and improve its operation.  Banks provide account information online, businesses keep electronic records, and even local libraries have computerized their card catalogs.  Yet hospitals and doctors’ offices are still largely writing notes in longhand and keeping exclusively paper files for patients.

Information technology (IT) has been developed to update our health care system, improve patient care, and reduce the estimated 98,000 annual American deaths related to medical errors.  However, there is a dramatic shortage of workers in the specialized field of health IT, which is a barrier to widespread implementation.

According to research by Dr. William Hersh, professor and chair of the Department of Medical Informatics & Clinical Epidemiology at Oregon Health & Science University, an additional 40,000 IT workers will be required to achieve the benefits of health IT.

“These are high-skill, high-paying jobs that could be funded under one of the goals of President-elect Obama’s economic stimulus package—the computerization of health care,” says Dr. Hersh.  “A commitment to growing the health IT workforce may allow quick retraining of IT workers in other industries, especially the financial industry, many of whom have lost their jobs.  It will also serve as a longer-term investment to insure a highly skilled and capable health IT workforce in the future.”

Congressman Wu’s 10,000 Trained by 2010 Act addresses this workforce shortage by funding grants through the National Science Foundation to train workers in health IT.  The act passed the House of Representatives by voice vote during the previous Congress, but never became law.

“The stimulus package that is being put together by President-elect Barack Obama and congressional leadership aims to jumpstart our economy by creating jobs across the country,” says Wu.  “Jobs already exist in the field of health IT; we just lack qualified workers.  Including the 10,000 Trained by 2010 Act in the stimulus will provide timely funds to train people for stable, essential jobs and make a strong investment in the future health of our economy.  I will be working with House leaders to use whatever legislative avenues are available to get this bill signed into law, and I hope that it will become a piece of the economic recovery legislation that is expected to pass in coming weeks.”     

The workforce training provisions in the 10,000 Trained by 2010 Act are a valuable first step toward larger health care reform.

"Members of the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society know the importance of passing bipartisan legislation like Congressman Wu's 10,000 Trained by 2010 Act because it is critical that we have trained health IT workers.  A well-trained technological workforce is an essential component of health care reform," says HIMSS President and CEO H. Stephen Lieber.  "Without adequate worker education and training, President-elect Barack Obama and Congress will not realize their vision of reforming health care for all Americans."

The widespread benefits of health IT will also include a decrease in the nearly $300 billion spent annually on inefficient, unnecessary, or duplicative treatments.  The federal government could save $34 billion over 10 years solely from health IT used by Medicare providers, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

Increasing the efficiency of health care delivery should provide a further benefit to those workers whose budgets are being squeezed by the poor health of the economy.  Workers could see costs for necessary treatments go down too, once health IT systems are widely implemented and the efficiency of health care delivery improves.

“Due to the escalating costs of U.S. health care, American businesses are struggling to provide quality coverage to their workforce,” says Craig Barrett, chairman of the board for Intel Corporation.  “Technology can bring needed efficiencies to health care, but we won’t be able to leverage those efficiencies unless we have a workforce in place that is tech savvy and understands how to build, implement, and use these systems.  Providing innovative IT training to our health workforce is an investment we should make now.  Ultimately, it’s the patients that will benefit from a higher quality delivery system”.

The 10,000 Trained by 2010 Act is H.R. 461 in the 111th Congress.  It passed the House during the 110th Congress as H.R. 1467.