The supply of health informatics workers is not keeping up with the demand for this type of professionals, according to a Burning Glass Technologies report.
Health informatics includes the collection, handling and processing of healthcare information for any number of purposes. A once largely clerical job, the new face of health informatics includes big data, electronic record keeping and compliance with changing regulatory issues.
Here are four more key findings from the report.
1. Job postings for health informatics position stay open an average of two days longer than the national average posting, at 35 days versus 33 days.
2. Additionally, and interestingly, positions for health informatics stay open twice as long as the positions which they are replacing. For example, job postings for medical records clerks — an older position — stay open an average of 18 days, while job postings for clinical analysts — a newer position — stay open an average of 38 days.
3. Job postings for health information managers and directors tend to stay open the longest, at an average of 42 days, followed by medical records and coding supervisor (41 days), clinical application developer (40 days) and medical coder (40 days).
4. The report indicates approximately 34,000 graduates of medical coder training programs enter the field each year, but just 68 percent of them pass the mandatory certification exams. What's more, more than 40 percent of these graduates do not even obtain the mandatory certificates.
To create this report, Burning Glass mined nearly 100 million unique job postings from approximately 40,000 online job boards dating back to 2007.
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