Fort Wayne, Ind. (March 6, 2012) —Indiana Tech has developed a new health information technology (HIT) program to meet a need in the health care industry. The online associate degree begins in July, 2012.
Students who complete the associate degree in HIT will have the specific skills required to support and use information-related technologies in the delivery of health care. Federal regulations that require the use of electronic health records are expected to create tens of thousands of jobs in health information technology within the next three years. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act allocated $38 billion to computerize patient records by 2015.
“The shift to electronic patient records has created a tremendous need for workers who are trained to deal with the unique technology needs of the health care industry,” said Steve Herendeen, vice president of the College of Professional Studies. “This degree fills that need and is ideal for current employees who need to be retrained as well as people interested in entering the health care field.”
Although the new degree program does include two courses on the new ICD-10 coding system, it goes far beyond outdated paper coding training programs to prepare graduates for a long term career path. The skills covered in the HIT associate degree include:
- Infrastructure implementation
- Integration of HIT into clinical workflow
- Meaningful use of HIT
- Application development and use
- Data-mining and analytics
- Report writing and compliance
- System analysis and evolution
The HIT program will be offered online through Indiana Tech’s College of Professional Studies. Each course lasts five weeks, and student can access the course materials anytime, anywhere with broadband Internet access. Although the HIT courses will not be offered until July, interested students can enroll now and begin taking other required classes such as English and math courses.
For more information or to contact an admissions representative, visit www.IndianaTech.edu/CPS or call 800.288.1766.
Indiana Tech is accredited by the Higher Learning Commission of the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools.
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