By Clinical Informatics News Staff

January 7, 2015 | A report issued last month from Burning Glass Technologies highlights the growing number of open health informatics positions. The open positions tend to be newer job titles requiring new and varied skills. Clinical Analysts, for example, assist clinical staff with IT systems, interpret data, and manage patient records. That requires some of the skills both of a registered nurse and of an IT technician—at present, an uncommon combination. These new types of positions stay open twice as long as the more traditional positons such as a medical records clerk.

The report looks at data from 2013, which ranged from more than 24,000 job postings for medical coders to 2,900 postings for health information managers or directors. Positions for the newer job titles tended to stay open about 40 days.

Long-open positions signals a lack of workers, which has potential implications not just for employers but also for efforts to improve health care in general, the report authors contend. “These record-keepers and analysts are the foot soldiers in the effort to create a digital, information-rich, seamless care system. A shortage of talent qualified to undertake these jobs can impede key improvements to America’s health care system—let alone the basic ability of the system to pay bills.”

There are opportunities. Burning Glass recommends that training institutions focus on aligning programs with the challenging certification regimens required to work in the field and develop closer ties between their clinical and IT programs, to produce more of the hybrid skill combinations that the health care field is demanding.

Job seekers and students should focus on acquiring credentials that are both portable—that is, trusted by a broad swath of employers—and “stackable,” to build on existing qualifications and enable workers to move up progressively to more advanced, higher-paying jobs.

Read the full report here: Missed Opportunities? The Labor Market in Health Informatics.