It’s true. Every cloud has its silver lining. And the silver lining in the monster cloud that is federal health care regulation is IT jobs.
According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the healthcare industry is the leading creator of IT jobs in today’s market. Furthermore, the bureau predicts that IT jobs in healthcare will grow by 20 percent annually through the year 2018.
There are currently about 176,090 healthcare IT jobs. At a 20 percent annual increase, that amounts to, well, a lot of jobs by 2018. You do the math.
And it’s not just your average bread-and-butter programmer who’s being hired by healthcare organizations. CIOs and CTOs are being hired in record numbers. Since 2009, CIO positions in the healthcare industry have increased 101 percent; CTO positions by 127 percent. Faced with so many new regulations, the healthcare industry needs IT leaders who are experienced in implementing new technologies.
So what are some of the new regs? Perhaps the most significant is the requirement that healthcare providers change from the current ICD-9 medical coding system to ICD-10, which adds about 68,000 new codes describing medical conditions and treatments. The changeover to ICD-10 affects databases, billing systems, reporting packages, EHRs (electronic health records), …, you name it. Major upgrades or whole replacements of current IT systems are required to accommodate ICD-10. While the changeover began about 2008, most hospitals haven’t even started the process.
Sounds daunting for healthcare. But it may be a godsend for IT. We haven’t had a chance to clean up this much code since Y2K. Great times!