Some local business and an educational institution are teaming up to prepare students for high-tech Austin medical jobs.

The University of Texas College of Natural Sciences is planning to offer a Health IT Summer Certificate Program. The intensive full-time, nine-week internship program will help about 50 students gain the skills they need to get a health information technology job, with the help of the University of Texas and the Texas e-Health Alliance.

Students who complete the program will receive a certificate as a health information manager and exchange specialist. They will then be eligible for jobs with local HIT companies, such as e-MDs, a company that manages electronic medical records and electronic health records systems, billing, and consultation.

“The job prospects for UT grads aren’t very good right now, despite the fact that it is a tremendous school,” Michael Stearns, president and CEO of e-MDs, told the Austin Business Journal. “One of the biggest challenges facing this (industry) is workforce development.”

The program is being funded by a $5.4 million American Recovery and Reinvestment Act grant awarded to the PURE-HIT Consortium, which includes UT Austin and the University of Texas School of Health Information Sciences at Houston.

According to the American Medical Association, the health information technology industry will create about 70,000 jobs during the near future. In addition, the current administration is investing $19 billion to encourage the healthcare industry to create electronic health records.

And the HITECH Act, or Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health, will offer up to $44,000 in Medicare bonus incentives to physicians to demonstrate meaningful use of electronic health records by 2011. Those incentives decrease after 2012.

“We have almost 4,000 biology majors, and those who aren’t going to professional schools have difficulty stepping into jobs,” Leanne Field, faculty adviser and lecturer at UT College of Natural Sciences, said. “On the health IT front, they have lots of jobs, but you have to have training to get into those jobs.

“We know this would be a drop in the bucket of what is needed, but we hope to expand this pilot program going forward so we can offer it via executive education, and not just to UT students,” she continued, adding that 180 students applied for the 50 available spots this year, and that the university plans to seek additional funding in the near future.

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