I recently had a conversation with Adam Greenberg from EMR Staffing Partners. In our discussion we talked about the changing health IT and EHR landscape. Obviously, we both have a vested interest in what’s happening with the EHR market. I’ve been blogging about EHR software (I guess we started blogging about EMR software) for over 9 years and he’s been doing EHR staffing for a long time as well. I’ve noted before how I think the Golden Age of EHR Adoption was over.
Adam seemed to agree with me, but described it as a maturing of the EHR market. Plus, he added this really interesting insight into the impact of EHR hiring in a more mature EHR market. He told me, “The hospital EHR has matured to the point that hospital IT departments need more full time people vs consulting.”
I love this insight and I think many who read this blog will agree (if you don’t, we’d love to hear why in the comments). As an EHR implementation matures, there is a move towards more full time staff to support the EHR. We knew that many of the EHR consultants were short term hires to handle the increased workload that comes with an EHR implementation. An EHR implementation is a HUGE task and requires extra hands, but also benefits from extra hands with deep experience implementing said EHR software.
Think about what’s next for EHR. The future of EHR is going to benefit from continuity of staff. Sure, consultants will likely always be some part of the mix in every decent sized hospital. However, we’ll see a real shift towards full time employees who deeply know and understand a hospital’s specific EHR implementation.
I’ll be interested to see how this shift impacts people’s employment choices. We’ve had a really good period for EHR consultants. I think there will still be quite a bit of work for EHR consultants, but it won’t be the same as we’ve had. Will this discourage many from leaving the full time work force to be consultants?