President Obama recently announced a plan to spend $19 billion to accelerate the adoption of electronic health records in doctors’ offices and hospitals, thrusting the issue to the forefront of the national agenda.


So timing is on the side of Temple’s Department of Health Information Management, as it launches a new Master of Science in Health Informatics program this fall. The innovative degree focuses on the design, development and implementation of electronic health records (EHR) systems in healthcare.


Health information management (HIM) is one of the nation’s fastest-growing health occupations. The U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics projects a 49 percent growth in the number of HIM workers by next year.

About 6,000 HIM professionals will be needed each year to fill new positions and replace vacant positions, yet only about 600 new baccalaureate graduates enter the HIM field each year.

“This field is growing steadily, even during this recession, due to the increased need for health information technology coupled with a shortage of nearly 212,000 skilled practitioners,” said Cindy Joy Marselis, RHIA, MBA, MS, director of the Health Informatics Program and assistant professor in the Fox School of Business. “We’re facing a myriad of new specialties, technologies, and funding sources.”


Temple’s part-time, two-year program is designed for physicians, nurses, therapists, health information management practitioners, administrators, or information technology professionals. It consists of 10 courses, including a work-related applied project and a graduate seminar. Classes will be offered on weekday evenings at one of Temple's campuses in the Philadelphia area. This spring, 20 students enrolled in the program, with more expected to join in the coming months.


“This is an innovative master’s program which will allow all members of the healthcare team to learn together and solve problems related to building the EHR systems,” said Laurinda B. Harman, Ph.D., RHIA, associate professor and chair of the department of Health Information Management.


The program is offered in collaboration by the Department of Health Information Management in the College of Health Professions and the Department of Management Information Systems at Fox School of Business.


According to a study by the RAND Corporation, a non-profit research organization, hospitals that use EHRs can save significantly due to reductions in hospital days, nursing administrative times and more efficient drug utilization. EHRs also improve patient care by reducing medication errors and allowing for more timely disease prevention and chronic disease management.


In addition, widespread adoption of health information technology by hospitals and physician offices for both inpatient and outpatient care would result in a potential efficiency savings of over $77 billion per year, according to projections from RAND.

Yet a June 2008 report in The New England Journal of Medicine found that less than one in five of the nation’s doctors have started using such records. The adoption of EHRs has been slow due to the costs of implementation, lack of financial incentives, and privacy and security concerns, which include lack or interoperability and lack of standards. Support from the government and improving technologies will continue to address these concerns.

In the meantime, Temple has already started down the digital path; the university’s hospital system is currently in the process of digitizing its medical records, and at the end of May the Foot and Ankle Institute at its School of Podiatry will roll out its own EHR system.

“As the need for the EHR becomes more urgent, government and regulatory agencies continue to create more standards, legislation, and guidelines pertaining to health information management, and the variety of health systems continue to proliferate,” said Marselis. “As health information technology becomes part of the national agenda, practitioners have a unique opportunity to participate in policy changes that may affect the country.”

—By Anna Nguyen