17,000 new positions added in November alone

SEATTLE – Healthcare IT is among the leading markets of the employment recovery that has occurred in recent months, according to MedZilla.com, a healthcare, pharmaceutical, and biotech employment information website.

A close look of government figures shows the growth has been months in the making, according to MedZilla executives.

"The statistics over the past few months have been more than encouraging,” says Del Johnston, manager of client relations at MedZilla.com.

“What we're seeing, and what we hope we'll continue to see, are new employment markets opening up where these new industries are being formed, Johnston added. “Health IT is a perfect example of this. Here you have two, previously separate industries that are rapidly growing into one another. Where the two meet you have an opportunity to explore a completely new labor pool.”

The number of available healthcare and related industry positions grew significantly once again in November, with 17,000 new jobs produced in the medical field alone, the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows in its most recent report. These developments have resulted in an average of 27,000 new jobs being added every month, according to the bureau.

Many large companies that previously held no close affiliations with the medical field have begun expanding their business models to include HIT-specific devices and software packages.
Accenture and AT&T recently announced collaboration on a new medical imaging solution, which officials from both companies say will assist health facilities in accessing and sharing medical images in order for physicians to collaborate more efficiently.

Guillermo Moreno, vice president of the recruiting firm Experis Healthcare, says skills and experience in EMR and EHR implementation, applications, information security, data management, as well as business intelligence and analytics abilities are going to be the hot commodities in 2012.

Eric Marx, vice president of Health Care IT for Modis, an IT staffing subsidiary of Adecco Group, agrees. "There are a lot of qualified people out there, he says, “and the gap they have is that most CIOs in hospitals are looking for clinical backgrounds that understand what medical jargon is. There's a premium on security folks and on folks that can take large amounts of information and get some value out of it, so business intelligence and data warehousing are significant. Hourly rates and salaries are going through the roof, and most candidates have multiple offers at the time that hospitals are trying to land them."

Bureau of Labor Statistics reports indicate the number of health IT jobs is expected to rise by 20 percent between 2008 and 2018; an increase which will exceed the average for all occupations through 2018.

This has already had a profound impact on employment in the health sector. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius released findings at the end of last month that confirmed that physicians' adoption of health information technology doubled in the past two years.