Texas colleges readying students to build, maintain electronic medical records

Three central Texas colleges are applying for a federal grant to train students in the use of electronic medical records, The Texas Tribune reports. "Texas State University in San Marcos and the University of Texas at Austin are partnering with the University of Texas School of Health Information in Houston to apply for a new federal grant in health information that could bring in $6 million across the three campuses. … The Office of the National Coordinator in Washington estimates that the U.S. will be short 50,000 skilled workers over the next five years to make the conversion to e-health records. That could mean as many as 5,000 new jobs in Texas." Enrollment in the Health Information Management program at Texas State University was up 25 percent last fall. Community colleges are also training students in the field in Texas (Kreighbaum, 1/29).

In Colorado, officials at Centura Health, a network of hospitals, hope electronic medical records will help provide better patient care, although they aren't counting on the system giving them cost savings, the Highlands Ranch Record reports. "'We told the board there would be no return on investment (with electronic medical records technology). We are making care safer, to benefit the patient,'" said Dana Moore, chief information officer for Centura Health (Sample, 1/28).

---

This article was reprinted from khn.org with permission from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Kaiser Health News, an editorially independent news service, is a program of the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan health care policy research organization unaffiliated with Kaiser Permanente.