If we look back during the early days of meaningful use, it was the start of what I called the golden age of EHR. That was true of the EHR market, but also the market for EHR jobs. In 2013, I wrote that the golden age of EHR adoption was over. That was true for the most part. Not that there wasn’t still a market, but the gold rush was over and sales were much harder to come by in the EHR market.
Some recent HIMSS analytics research declared “near universal adoption of EHR Tools after eight years of steady growth.” As you look around, it’s true that pretty much all hospitals and most ambulatory practices now have an EHR.
As we reach EHR market saturation, that doesn’t mean that the EHR jobs are over. Sure, many of those EHR implementation jobs are over. We wrote a while back about the shift from EHR consultants to full time EHR positions. That’s still largely the case, but we do still see opportunities for EHR consultants.
Gone are the EHR implementation consultants (or at least there are fewer of them) and we’re seeing the rise of the EHR optimization consultant. Certainly, there won’t be as many EHR optimization consultants as there were EHR implementation consultants, but there will still be a big need for EHR optimization. Plus, these optimization consultants will likely to be more highly skilled and demand even higher pay. That’s a good thing for qualified EHR optimization consultants.
I’ve also seen many EHR consultants shifting to work with healthcare analytics since there’s such a big demand for healthcare analytics professionals. Yes, it’s still a good time for those looking for jobs in the world of EHR and health IT. Maybe not quite as good as it was during the meaningful use era, but pretty close.
We’ll see how long this lasts. However, we all know that healthcare isn’t going anywhere and they can’t stop using their billion dollar EHR. So, the EHR job market should be pretty good for a while to come.
