Making It in IT: Asking about Healthcare IT Certification

With the upcoming boom in Healthcare, certified IT techs will be in demand.

Last week I received the following inquiry via email in my Tom’s IT Pro inbox. It touches on Healthcare IT certification, a subject of recent strong and growing interest in the field, not just in general, but also for yours truly. I’ve written an article for Tom’s IT Pro that’s entitled “Top 5 Healthcare IT Certifications” that is now available in these pages. Here’s an overview and some background for these sure-to-be-popular credentials in the booming field of Healthcare IT.

Hello Ed:

A few months ago I emailed you questions regarding obtaining new IT certifications. The information you provided me has helped out immensely and I wanted to thank you for steering me in the right direction. Since I last wrote you in January, I've obtained my CompTIA A+ certification and have my Network+ test scheduled in a couple of weeks. The reason I'm emailing you today is I have a new question, again regarding certifications, but this time it's for the Healthcare Industry.

Recently, I received a call from my dentist who had heard that I've been helping individuals and businesses out with IT projects. I made a quick visit to his office and learned that he had been having multiple companies help him set up his network and for the most part it's pretty much a mess. He was backing up his entire server (which his office is now paperless) to a tape drive and keeping the tape in the drive at all times; not very secure or smart. In the case of a disaster, all of his information could be lost. I contacted the company that he uses for his dental software (Eaglesoft) and through them he set up a remote cloud backup that is HIPAA/HITECH certified. My dentist is very pleased with what is set up and sleeps better now knowing his data is backed up offsite in a securely encrypted location.

Overall he really likes working with me and I would like to offer similar services to other clinics in my town, but I am very concerned with the liability of working in this setting. To get down to the main point of why I'm contacting you today, I see that CompTIA now offers a "Healthcare IT Technician" certificate for $100 that sounds like it will provide me with some important information on regulatory requirements and security to work in this industry. Are you familiar with this and is it well received? It appears to be brand new and I have a study book I'm considering pre-ordering on Amazon to help prepare for this. I'm thinking it must be brand new because I'm having trouble finding any study/course books out there that isn't "pre-order".

Also, do you know if there are any other certifications or HIPAA/HITECH requirements I need to address before calling on other small practices like my dentist? I visited www.healthit.gov and www.hhs.gov and everything I see there mostly pertains to what a doctor or dentist office needs to do, not information in regards to a small IT provider such as myself. I even called the folks at healthit.gov and after an agonizing wait I finally was able to speak with someone but they were unable to provide me any information, but said "I'm sure the information you need is on our website somewhere.”

If you can help me out, please let me know if you have any feedback or information for me to look into. I see a huge potential for me to provide quality, personalized IT support to small practices in my area. They have the finances to be good paying customers and none of the small practices seem to have on-site IT personnel. Thank you and I hope you're able to help me out!

Best Regards,

MK

Dear MK:

Talk about synchronicity! A few days before I got your email, I wrote an article for Tom’s IT Pro that should be posted soon. It is entitled “Top 5 Healthcare IT Certifications,” and it provides information about the leading programs in this rapidly growing field. Turns out that 2012 is the year that the Federal Government requires systems and IT service providers that handle electronic health records (usually abbreviated EHR, in government-speak, or sometimes EMR for “electronic medical records”) to become certified, and for healthcare providers (hospitals, clinics, medical practices, and so forth) and related companies (insurance companies and health program services providers and administrators) to make use of such technology. In fact, by the time the relevant legislation (the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, usually abbreviated ARRA) runs its course, almost $26 billion will be spent on health information technology investments and incentive payments. This has spurred huge interest in certification and approval for systems and services, and also spawned a wave of IT certifications as well.

Certainly, as is so often the case with fields in which CompTIA gets involved, the CompTIA Healthcare IT Technician is a great entry-level credential to get people like you started in this field. Like you, I also found the Health IT Certification program a bit opaque and short on details (and downgraded it accordingly in my assessment of its potential worth). I do identify several other programs in my upcoming article that look pretty promising, and hope you’ll read my coverage and information on those programs in the article. Alas, the best programs include a bachelor’s degree or better as a background requirement, and may thus be out of reach for some IT professionals already working in the field. Those planning to work in IT, or looking for a good specialization, will want to check out which institutions offer the “right degrees” to make progress in this field more promising.

But hey, you are definitely onto something and if this subject area interests you, I say “Go for it!” Be sure to read this Fierce EMR article entitled “ONC final rule establishes permanent health IT certification program” to make sure you understand the legal and regulatory context in which all this activity is taking place, though.

Good luck with your career planning and certification activity. It sounds like you’ve chosen a worthwhile and productive path to research, and perhaps even to follow.

--Ed--

 Ed Tittel is a 30-year-plus veteran of the computing industry, who’s worked as a programmer, a technical manager, a classroom instructor, a network consultant and a technical evangelist for companies that include Burroughs, Schlumberger, Novell, IBM/Tivoli and NetQoS. He has written and blogged for numerous publications, including Tom's Hardware, and is the author of over 140 computing books with a special emphasis on information security, Web markup languages and development tools, and Windows operating systems. See here for all of Ed's Tom's IT Pro articles.