Employment Opportunity:
Enroll Now in Free Program for Electronic Health Records

Individuals with healthcare experience or computer experience could qualify for free, online training from Bristol Community College to prepare for a fertile career in electronic health records.

Yes, that means completely free and online. And yes, it offers access to one of the guaranteed job fields - the effort to turn paper into electronic healthcare records - required by Federal law.
Bristol Community College is one of 23 community colleges that will participate in a $16-million federal grant over two years to educate up to 7,500 healthcare information workers in 12 states. Bristol is the only community college that won the grant . Bristol will provide services through the grant in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and New Hampshire.

By 2015, all Massachusetts medical records must be electronic, but there are not enough trained professionals to make the transition. In the Commonwealth alone, a projected 5,000 to 10,000 skilled workers are needed in the next four years to fulfill the mandate for electronic records. Bristol joins the consortium with its Healthcare Information degree program to address the critical need to provide skilled professionals who can modernize and manage electronic health records.

"The field offers great opportunity," said Joy Rose, program director and faculty member in the healthcare information program at Bristol. "This program is designed to meet the critical need for skilled workers who can convert, implement, and manage electronic records would become available in all healthcare scenarios and patients would be treated with the immediacy of electronic records." The Bristol program is particularly convenient, she added, as it is entirely online and students will not have to travel. Plus, it is totally free to qualified applicants.

The grant from the The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.

Bristol Community College will offer programs in two roles: Practice Workflow and Information Management Redesign Specialist and Clinician/Practitioner Consultant. Qualified applicants for this program are either experienced healthcare workers who need computer training, or an information technology professional without a health background. The online courses allow students to take courses on their own schedules. After six months of courses, students will be eligible to sit for a competency exam and could convert competencies into credit toward the associate in science in healthcare information.

The first cohort is enrolling now. To learn more, contact Joy Rose, Program Director, at 508-678-2811, ext. 2142.

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