ANIA: ARRA Means ‘Golden’ Days Ahead for Nursing Informaticists

There are mountains of problems to overcome when it comes to automating systems and getting patient health records off of paper. And the HITECH Act has added urgency to the tasks at hand, said John Delaney, RN, BSN, director of IT outreach at University Medical Center in Lubbock, Texas. “It’s a huge job and we’ve got big problems,” said Delaney during a session at the ANIA/CARING conference last week.

Delaney’s presentation on nursing informatics’ role in the light of the HITECH Act focused on the opportunities that come with these problems. “This is the time for all of us in nursing and informatics to really look at the culture and look at the environment and figure out what [we] want to do. Because there is a lot going on and a lot of new opportunity, thanks to HITECH,” said Delaney, a med/surg nurse with 23 years’ experience at University Medical Center and more than 10 years in health IT.

“ARRA is funding a lot of the things you and I are going to be working on for the next several years,” including grants to fund state health information exchange (HIE) development, 60 health IT regional extension centers (HITRECs) and workforce training, he said.

“Now that everybody is trying to get to meaningful use, think of the resource shortage we’re going to have out there. And that’s why all of us are golden…Will there be an increased demand for nursing informaticists? Man, you better believe it,” Delaney proclaimed.