6 Most In-Demand Skills for HIT Professionals in 2012

by Michelle McNickle | HealthcareITNews

The demand for capable IT specialists is growing, and according to Guillermo Moreno, vice president of recruiting firm Experis Healthcare, certain skills are bound to take the spotlight come 2012. 

“This is an area that’s of interest and concern, given what we’re seeing in the marketplace,” Moreno said. “With the continuation of the build of the information technology movement in healthcare, we are seeing some sizable fractures in the healthcare space around human capital and human talent.” 

With the New Year around the corner, we asked Moreno to look ahead and share with us the top six most in-demand skills for healthcare IT professionals in 2012. 

1. ICD-10/5010 expertise. Moreno said with the movement to reach the audit function and compliance right in front of us, the demand in the market place for professionals is at an all-time high. “More and more organizations are beginning to road map themselves in ICD-10 migration,” he said. “Everyone understands what ICD-9 is and what it means to generically migrate to ICD-10, but there are few who have actually made the transition or are in the process of doing so.” Moreno said he’s seeing requests and demands both on the payer and provider side, as well as large government organizations looking for skilled professionals. This includes those with expertise in project management, program management, and coding. “Those are the three pretty major areas for people who understand ICD-10, and frankly, in this country, there isn’t a lot of experience in that space.” 

[See also: ICD-10 stirs controversy among payers.]

2. EMR and EHR implementation. The increased momentum and adoption of electronic health records is prevalent both for ambulatory and inpatient care. But, according to Moreno, with adoption comes voids and needs in the industry. “Some of the major software houses are tailoring their agendas around meaningful use and CPOE and other things that are required,” he said. “This includes quality measures and compliance in the future around payment. So when you look at that and who is in the marketplace today, there’s clearly a higher degree of contracts in place and requirements to deliver against inpatient and outpatient EMRs versus what’s in the marketplace that’s available.” He added that for certain implementation skill sets “there is a higher demand than there is availability.”

3. Applications know-how. “The other piece, both in the payer and provider space, is the development solution space,” said Moreno. This includes applications and data management, as organizations become more mature regarding solutions. “They’re beginning to fill the landscape and [are looking into] a lot of applications required to measure quality and standards,” he said. “So some increase in software development, software management, and application management. Yet, when you look at the marketplace, and in some cases, companies who own the solutions themselves, they’re having difficulty finding those skills.”

4. Security and compliance skills. Both of which go hand-in-hand with where we are today in the industry and where we’re navigating to, said Moreno. “[This is] where information is collected and is required to move from one environment to another,” he continued. “There’s a notion of how do we protect that information and be HIPAA compliant and deal with PHI.” In the past, added Moreno, the industry was focused on introspective security. “And now, there’s a higher increase for skills in the information management security side of the business.”

[See also: Data breaches top of mind for IT decision makers.]

5. Data management talents. Moreno said data management and data security is where he and his team have placed a lot of effort and emphasis. “It’s the complaint side of the business, so it’s important to understand how you manage and protect the information.” This includes putting together the appropriate structure to govern security, he said, and knowing how to protect information and address breaches from a compliance perspective. “Knowing how to have plans in place so you address the potential losses and breach of information and how to be protected in the future,” added Moreno. “It’s going to require some skill sets that aren’t mainstream in healthcare; they are in other industries, so I think we’re going to see a gap for a period then a movement of professionals who have that skill set in other industries, helping to address this need in healthcare.”

6. BI and analytics abilities. Moreno concluded business intelligence and analytics data is a way to “aggregate information in a better way and with better quality.” But he sees the need for these skills as yet to come. “They aren’t necessarily in the marketplace," he said. "There are tools, but they aren’t as robust and mainstream as those the pharmaceutical industry has been using for a long time.” The industry is starting  to see a higher degree of attention on finding newer and more aggressive BI and analytics tools, he added, “which, in turn, will have a higher degree of demand for those professionals."

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This week in Healthcare IT

M&A, Financial Reports and Funding

 HMS Holdings, a vendor of health insurance software services, will acquire HealthDataInsights, a claims review firm and Medicare recovery audit contractor, for $400 million...Grant Thornton LLP, a consulting firm, has acquired the health solutions division of IT consulting company Computer Technology Associates for an undisclosed sum.
Perminova, a developer of online software for cardiology centers, has secured $7 million in venture capital funding...AmbiCom Holdings, a developer of wireless medical products, has signed an investment agreement for up to $1 million with Kodiak Capital Group...Comprehend Systems, a developer of data analytics tools, has secured $1.2 million in seed round funding with contributions from multiple investors. 

Contracts

Athens Regional Medical Center in Georgia has upgraded its Omnicell medication and supply management tools and analytics software...Lompoc Valley Medical Center in California will implement Allscripts' acute care EHR system...UC Health in Ohio has chosen Ciena's performance network connectivity platform...San Francisco VA Medical Center has deployed DSS' chemotherapy manager system.
CalOptima, a regional extension center in California, has picked Office Ally as one of its preferred EHR vendors...Conway Medical Center in South Carolina has chosen PatientKeeper's automated physician workflow and clinical applications...the John C. Lincoln Health Network in Arizona has picked iSirona's device connectivity tool...Kleinert Kutz Hand Care Center in Kentucky has selected ChartLogic's EHR system.
ProHealth Care in Wisconsin has chosen Epic System's EHR platform...Sedgwick County Health Center in Colorado has picked Prognosis Health Information Systems' EHR system...Lakeland Regional Health System in Florida has chosen RelayHealth's health information exchange platform...The U.S. Army has awarded four contracts to CACI International to provide software for the U.S. Army's Defense Medical Logistics Standard Support System.

Product Development and Marketing

Medicomp Systems has imbedded its documentation and patient management application into MED3000's EHR platform...athenahealth -- a provider of cloud-based practice management, EHR and care coordination services -- will collaborate with Medley Health, a provider of membership practice marketing and communications services for independent primary care providers, on product integration, co-marketing programs and sales outreach initiatives.

Personnel

Edward Shortliffe -- an adjunct professor of biomedical informatics at Columbia University in New York -- is resigning as president and CEO of the American Medical Informatics Association...Michael Chrissos -- a partner at Ann Arbor Bone and Joint Surgery, a site director for the University of Michigan Department of Orthopaedic Surgery and director of orthopedic trauma services at St. Joseph Mercy Hospital in Michigan -- has been appointed to the Michigan Health IT Commission; Gregory Forzley -- CMIO at Saint Mary's Health Care and medical director of Advantage Health Physicians Network in Michigan -- has been re-appointed to the board.
Rahul Singa -- former president and CEO of WorldDoc, a provider of health risk assessments, member portals and consumer engagement programs for insurers -- has been named chief medical officer at MedHOK, a vendor of care management and compliance software...James Karis -- former president and CEO of biotechnology firm Entelos -- has been named CEO of CollabRx, a developer of cancer treatment databases...Bharadwaj Heragu -- former vice president of quality for Wipro, an IT services and consulting company -- has been named chief quality officer at Anthelio, a health care technology and business processes company.
Viet Nguyen -- a pediatrician at Internal Medicine-Pediatrics Associates -- has been named CMIO at Systems Made Simple, a provider of health IT platforms...Randall Lipps -- chair, president and CEO of Omnicell, a provider of health IT services -- has been named to the board of directors of Radisphere, a provider of radiology products...Peter Urbain -- formerly of IBM -- has been named senior vice president of partner sales at Merge Healthcare; the company also named Steven Tolle -- former senior vice president and general manager at health IT company OptumInsight -- its senior vice president of solutions management.

Read more: http://www.ihealthbeat.org/articles/2011/11/11/health-it-business-news-roundup-for-the-week-of-november-11-2011.aspx#ixzz1duMZsY41

Email 101: 8 Etiquette Rules for Job Seekers

By Tony Morrison

While it’s probably the most easily forgotten, E-mail is one of the sharpest tools in any job seeker’s toolbox. After all, it is the key to any online membership, keeps you up-to-date with your network, and is home to your Daily Deals newsletters!

While it’s easy to take E-mail for granted, job seekers should remember that E-mail is a powerful tool that should be used appropriately, especially when used with potential employers or networking contacts.

Even if you think you’re on top of E-mail etiquette, refresh your memory with these eight rules:

Pick your name carefully – It was really cute when your E-mail address was “PlayBoyBunny88” in college, but a potential employer or networking contact is going to find it tacky and inappropriate. When in doubt, the best E-mail address is a combination of your first and last name.

Don’t forget the subject line – Would you open an E-mail from someone you don’t know that contains no subject line? Stay out of the spam folder by addressing the topic of your E-mail in your subject line. The more specific you are, the more likely your E-mail will be opened.

Leave the LOL out of it – LOL, JK, ROFL, and other web jargon you have up your sleeve belong on Facebook, Twitter, and SMS not professional E-mails. While E-mail can be casual, resorting to jargon, emoticons, and text slang could be telling a potential employer that you don’t take this seriously.

Keep it short and sweet – Think about how much time you have to read through your E-mails. Between newsletters, daily deals, and personal E-mail, you have a lot to go through in a short amount of time. If you’re E-mailing someone your resume, making a request, or simply introducing yourself, keep it to the point.

Make your signature your own – Your professional E-mail needs a solid signature. Not only does an informative signature make for a good finish to any E-mail message, but it also provides in one location your contact information making you immediately accessible. Everyone’s signature is different, but try to include your name, E-mail address, phone number, web address, and hyperlinks to your social media profiles.

Remember to sign-off – If you have a good professional signature, do you have to include a sign-off as well? Yes! Professional sign-offs include “best wishes” or “sincerely.” Use a phrase that seems most like you.

Attach it first – This has to be the easiest to commit and most common mistake ever. E-mailing your resume and forgetting to attach it to the E-mail. We have all done it! No worries. Mistakes happen. Thankfully, email service providers like Gmail will prompt you, but don’t rely on that. Make a habit of attaching the document before you even start writing the resume.

Follow the 24-hour rule – E-mail is immediate. No need to wait for the postman or scramble for a stamp. It’s a quick click and done! However, procrastination and overflowing inboxes will often slow down the effectiveness of E-mail communication. Follow the 24-hour rule. Make a point to deal with each E-mail message you receive within 24 hours. When an E-mail requires your response, act on it within a day, even if only to acknowledge that you have received their message and need a day or two to compile the requested information. Someone is waiting for you to answer them, and your appreciation of their time and consideration will send a strong message that you value them and will respond as requested.

It seems like such a simple thing, but it is because E-mail is so simple that the quality of our communication suffers.  We sometimes forget common courtesies and dismiss E-mails with a single click.  Be careful.  You could be dismissing your next job.

Read more: https://www.publish2.com/organizations/4413/newswires/571/stories/4941041#ixzz1dijjM1oB

Yesterday Influences Your Performance Today in Surprising Ways

 by Heidi Grant Halvorson at Forbes

It probably won’t surprise you if I tell you that thinking about your past successes and failures can influence your performance in the here and now.  There’s nothing like a winning season to give a player confidence going into that last game, and nothing like a string of awkward dates to make you nervous about how the next one is going to turn out.  But thanks to new research, it’s become clear that the relationship between our past and present isn’t as obvious as you might think.

Imagine you are about to take a difficult test, or undergo a grueling interview.  Before you begin, you take a few moments to reflect on some of your past successes – moments where you really shined.  This turns out to be a really good idea, because when you think about the many times in the past when you reached your goals, you start feeling like you’ve really got something that makes you a successful person.

In other words, reflecting on past successes (plural) leads your brain to unconsciously, and quite naturally, assume that since you are the common denominator in all of those successes, your traits (e.g., your intelligence, creativity, charm) are the reason for your success.

Believing that you’ve got it, whatever it is, makes you more confident, and provides a very real boost to your performance.

Of course the same kind of process occurs when you reflect on many past failures before embarking on a new task – you unconsciously assume that something about you is to blame for your bad track record, and as a consequence your performance in the here and now suffers.

No real surprises there, right?  But what if instead of reflecting on your past successes and failures plural, you just thought about a single success or failure?  What does your brain do with just one particular memory?  The answer:  it unconsciously draws the opposite conclusion!  That’s right – remembering a single episode of success can make you doubt yourself, just as the memory of a single instance of failure can leave you feeling more confident.  But why?

General memories, or memories about a group of similar behaviors (like many games won, or many dates gone wrong) lead you to make unconscious inferences about your own traits, because they seem to reflect what youtypically do.

Specific memories, on the other hand, are about a single event (e.g., that one win against Central High, that one bad date with Brad).  When you focus on a single event, you are less likely to see yourself as responsible for whatever happened, and more likely to unconsciously conclude that it was all due to the situation you were in.  (You beat Central High because their team isn’t that strong.  Your date with Brad was awkward because Brad isn’t really your type.)

In other words, memories of a single occurrence in our lives can easily feel like the exception, rather than the rule.

This was nicely illustrated in a set of recent studies.  Some of the participants were asked to reflect on a number of their past successes or failures by completing the sentence: “In general, I’m successful (I fail) when….”

The other participants were focused instead on a single episode of success or failure, by completing the sentence: “I succeeded (failed) once when I had to….”

The results were remarkable.  People who were asked to reflect on their many past successes or a specific failure scored roughly 10% better on tests of mathematical ability, as well as verbal, spatial, and abstract reasoning, than those who reflected on either many past failures or a single specific success.

Continue reading

This week in Healthcare IT

M&A, Financial Reports and Funding

HealthGrades, a vendor of consumer health content, has merged with CPM Marketing Group, a vendor of customer relationship management software.

NantWorks -- a health care, educational, scientific and communications technology firm -- has acquired ZioSoft, a developer of 4-D and 5-D medical imaging analytics, for an undisclosed sum and will rename the company Qi Imaging...Blackstone, an investment and financial advisory firm, has completed its acquisition of Emdeon, a provider of revenue and payment cycle management and clinical information exchange tools, for about $3 billion...Siemens Healthcare, a health care services and IT provider, has entered into an agreement to acquire MobileMD, a provider of health information exchange services, for an undisclosed amount.

Merge Healthcare, a provider of imaging and interoperability tools, reported a Q3 2011 net loss of $1 million on $60.1 million in revenue, compared with a Q3 2010 net loss of $5 million on $45.2 million in revenue; Merge also announced that it has begun an offer to exchange $52 million of senior secured notes due 2015 that are registered under the Securities Act for $52 million of outstanding senior secured notes due 2015 that are not registered under the Securities Act to comply with obligations under a registration rights agreement.

Clarity Health Services -- a provider of online medical care coordination, patient insurance and medical data services -- has raised $4.6 million in capital.

Contracts

Centracare Health System in Minnesota, health care payer and provider HealthPartners and 11 radiology practices in California, New Jersey, Virginia and Washington state have selected Merge Healthcare's imaging and interoperability systems...Brown & Toland Physicians in California will implement Allscripts' community health record system.

The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs has chosen HP Enterprise Services as its contractor for the VA Transformation Twenty-One Total Technology health care and benefits services program; VA also has awarded Harris a three-year, $4.5 million contract to develop an online mental health treatment and medication management system under the My HealtheVet personal health record system.

Central Ohio Primary Care Physicians will implement eClinicalWorks' EHR system across its 44 practices...The Ohio State University Medical Center has implemented iSirona's device connectivity and integration platform...the British Columbia Ministry of Health has awarded CGI Group, a provider of IT and business process services, a four-year, $15 million contract extension for its services.

The Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health has selected Netsmart Technologies' integrated behavioral health clinical, administrative and financial IT system...the New Jersey Health IT Extension Center and the Chicago Health IT Regional Extension Center have selected Welch Allyn as a certified EHR vendor.

Product Development and Marketing

LifeCard Plans, a provider of online storage and emergency access to medical and legal documents, and U.S. Legal Forms are jointly providing state-specific and editable legal documents...athenahealth -- a provider of cloud-based practice management, EHR and care coordination services -- will collaborate with Medley Health -- a provider of membership practice marketing and communications services -- to integrate, market and sell their products.

Personnel

Joe Boyd -- owner of the management consulting and executive training firm Boyd Consulting -- has been named chair of Encore Health Resources, a provider of health IT consulting services...T. Forcht Dagi -- a neurosurgeon and partner at HLM Venture Partners -- has been named CMO at health IT company Aventura HQ...Russ Thomas -- president and COO of health information network Availity -- has been named CEO of the company.

David Gascoigne -- former vice president of promotion management at consulting firm IMS Health -- has been named executive vice president of consulting analytics, innovation and alliances at ImpactRx, a market research and IT company serving the health care industry...Amitav Hajra -- former manager at Epic Systems -- has been named director of Hayes Management Consulting's inpatient division...Darren Schulte -- former leader of clinical and product strategy at Anvita Health, a health care analytics company -- has been named CMO of Apixio, a provider of clinical integration and health data tools.

Read more: http://www.ihealthbeat.org/articles/2011/11/4/health-it-business-news-roundup-for-the-week-of-november-4-2011.aspx#ixzz1clp89Sri

Use the busy holiday season to find a job...

Most job seekers think November and December are lousy months to look for work. People are distracted by festivities and family. When potential hiring managers are at their desks, they’re overwhelmed by year-end deadline pressure. Plus, those who have been job hunting for a long time feel like the holidays present an opportunity to take a break.

But Catherine Jewell, an Austin, Texas, career coach and author of the book "New Résumé, New Career," says job-hunters who keep at it are actually more likely to find a job over the holidays. Among the reasons: There’s less competition, the season puts people in a receptive mood, and all those parties and family gatherings overflow with networking opportunities.

“People forget what great resources they have in their current networks,” observes Jewell, who worked in advertising and marketing for 15 years before she became a career coach. Family and friends want to help you, and even if you feel like you already stay in touch regularly, seeing them face-to-face when everyone is in the holiday spirit offers the perfect opportunity for reminding them of exactly what you’re looking for. Be as specific as you can during your conversations, Jewell advises. “Tell them the title you’re looking for, the kind of company,” she says. “You’re asking for information.” If you’re lucky, your cousin knows someone at the firm where you’d love to work, and can provide a lead.

Forbes.com slideshow: Use the holidays to find a job

If you’re employed and thinking about changing jobs, or if your objective is to make a career switch, holiday gatherings also offer a chance to ask people about their own work. Be inquisitive. “You’re not pushing your agenda,” says Jewell. “You’re a sponge for data.”

It can be helpful to ask a fellow partygoer what’s going on inside her company. Example: at a luncheon, Jewell met a woman who works for a state agency. Jewell inquired about what was new in the training realm, and the woman said her division was focusing on leadership. Since Jewell does leadership training herself, she realized she’d found a great lead, and she arranged to follow up with a phone call the next week. The connection resulted in a contract for Jewell to provide 28 days of leadership training for the state agency.

In addition to parties thrown by family and friends, there are always plenty of festivities hosted by professional associations. If you can cadge an invite to the office party of the company where you want to work, you might get an inside scoop.

“The bottom line is that the best job leads come from other professionals,” Jewell points out. “They are your entry point to the secret job market, which is only available through contact with people.” Out of the 150 people Jewell has coached this year, she says, 125 got their jobs via information they found through family, friends or business associates. “That’s where the leads are,” she says, “in people’s heads.”

Most job-seekers think that it’s fruitless to call a hiring manager on Dec. 22. But Jewell says that’s wrong. “Many managers have a decreased work schedule during the holidays,” she points out. If they’re not away, they’re more likely to engage with you when you call.

Jewell has some more holiday job-seeking advice that may seem a tad Pollyannaish to the cynical among us. “The holiday time is a great time to count your blessings,” she says. “You may be unemployed, but you still have a home to live in and a family that loves you.” She points out that hiring managers are more receptive to job-seekers who express confidence and an optimistic frame of mind. If you can use the holidays to renew your appreciation of all that is good in your life, that can help you pursue your search with an attitude that’s most likely to get results.

by  Susan Adams, Forbes.com