St. Petersburg College's Healthcare Informatics mission is to prepare a workforce with the healthcare informatics skills needed by the healthcare community.
Healthcare informatics is a field at the intersection of information management, medicine, and the business of healthcare. It embodies information management resources and methods to optimize the electronic acquisition, analysis, synthesis, and secure use of information in the healthcare industry. Informatics has become a focus of national attention due to rapid changes in technology that are redefining the environment for capturing and managing healthcare data, a dramatic surge in healthcare information, and federal mandates to develop standardized Electronic Health Records (EHRs) and create regional health information networks. In a briefing to a congressional caucus in July 2006, former Health and Human Services Secretary (HHSS) Tommy Thomson emphasized that the decision the healthcare industry is facing is not whether or not to go electronic-but how soon. Further, Michael O Leavitt, the current HHSS, recently said that the rollout of EHRs was "the most important thing happening in health care."
Healthcare informatics meets all five criteria of a high-growth, high-demand industry.
Substantial numbers of new jobs:
- The U.S. Bureau of Labor forecasts two of the top ten job growth areas are in healthcare and three of the top ten are in information technology. Clearly healthcare information technology is rapidly emerging as one of the top career fields in the nation.
- The U.S. Department of Labor also includes medical records and health information technicians in its Industry Snapshot for the Health Care High Growth Industry Profile identifying it as an occupation that is expected to grow faster than average.
- Two variables are stimulating the need for healthcare informatics workforce training-projected growth in the number of health information technicians and population demographics. In addition to hospital settings, healthcare informatics jobs will be created in physicians offices, home healthcare and outpatient care organizations, and at nursing and residential care facilities.
- Additionally, demand for health information technicians is projected to grow by 29% through 2014 due to the introduction of new technologies; the need to record information for increasing numbers of tests, treatments, and procedures; and the need to comply with Federal legislation mandating EHRs.
Significant impact on the overall economy:
- Healthcare is an increasingly vital component of the economy. Spending for healthcare, as a share of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), increased from 10.1% in 1985 to 15.3% in 2003 and is projected to reach 18.4% by 2013.
- Florida's personal healthcare expenditures are higher than for the nation-15.9% of the Gross State Product compared to 13.4% of the Gross State Product for the United States.
- Highlighting the significance of healthcare spending, the Department of Health and Human Services reported, "Since the late 1990's, health care spending has increased at a faster rate of growth than has gross domestic product (GDP), inflation, and population. In the latest year data are available (2003), total national spending on healthcare rose to $1.7 trillion, or $5,670 per person."
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