A number of themes have been prevalent at this year’s AHIMA show, taking place this week in Salt Lake City. Healthcare information management professionals have a number of big priorities – the transition to ICD-10 being the most prevalent, at least from what I’ve seen on the show floor so far. Recruitment is a close second. With a number of colleges and healthcare systems present as exhibitors, it’s obvious there is a need for trained HIM professionals. In speaking with folks from the Region D Health IT Workforce Development Program, part of the Community College Consortia Program, which hopes to train more than 10,500 healthcare IT professionals by the end of this year, it is evident that there are resources out there to train folks, and they are willing to get the word out about it.

AHIMA has recognized this need for job creation. It announced at the show on Monday that it has created the HIM Jobs for America Initiative, and has entered into a public-private partnership with the Department of Health and Human Services and North Shore Medical Labs.

In announcing the initiative, Bill Rudman, vice president, educational visioning at AHIMA and executive director of the AHIMA Foundation, explained that “AHIMA wants to build a partnership with business, academia and the federal government to create the estimated 40,000 jobs required to properly build and maintain a national electronic health records initiative.”

As part of the initiative, AHIMA will provide six hours of free healthcare IT training to healthcare professionals in underserved communities, first focusing on physicians in small practices in North Carolina, Mississippi and Alabama. The program will provide 100 participants with EHR licenses for one year. North Shore will donate electronic health record software and services via Nortec Software, a provider of EHR technology, as well as medical billing and transcription services.

As I mentioned above, the transition to IDC-10 has been THE big theme in the exhibit hall. I’ve noticed solution after solution exhibited at booth after booth created to help physicians make the transition. As John Lynn mentioned in an earlier post, some companies are taking a light-hearted approach in marketing their ICD-10 solutions. Take QuadraMed, for example, which kept attendees happy Sunday night during the evening reception with special ICD-9 and ICD-10 cocktails. Or, as John mentioned last week, Conifer Health, which has quickly run out of its ICD-10 stickers.

All kidding aside, the transition to ICD-10 and the impact the new codes will have on patient care is no joke. Paula Lawlor, RHIA, President of Clinical Revenue Cycle Services HIM at Conifer, spoke with me briefly about what Conifer is doing in the area health information management and clinical revenue cycle services:

I’ll be walking the show floor today, and hope to have a wrap-up of EMR-related technologies for next week’s post.