HHS community-college program sees first graduating class

More than 3,000 health information technology professionals will graduate this month from 82 community-college programs funded by the Department of Health and Human Services' Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC). This first wave of graduates, composed mainly of mid-career professionals, will be "equipped to facilitate the implementation of electronic health records, ideally in rural healthcare settings, where implementing EHRs is particularly problematic, largely due to a lack of expertise and a limited pool of HIT trained professionals," according to an ONC announcement. According to the ONC, the Community College Consortia, which is part of its Health IT Workforce Development Program, will help train more than 10,000 new health IT professionals annually by the end of 2012.