Characteristics of the healthcare information technology workforce in the HITECH era: underestimated in size, still growing, and adapting to advanced uses

Objective: There is little readily available data about the size and characteristics of the healthcare information technology workforce. We sought to update a previous description of the size, growth, and characteristics of this workforce based on the Healthcare Information Management Systems Society (HIMSS) Analytics® Database, a resource that includes hospital size, number of beds, amount of staffing, and an eight-stage model of electronic health record adoption (Electronic Medical Record Adoption Model, EMRAM℠).

Materials and Methods: We updated an analysis done using a 2007 snapshot of the HIMSS Analytics Database with a comparable snapshot from 2014 in order to estimate the size of the current workforce and project future needs. For the 2014 data, we applied the same weighted average analysis used in 2007 to obtain a ratio of information technology (IT) hospital full-time equivalent (FTE) to staffed beds, extrapolate the results to all US hospitals, and project the workforce nee...