Healthcare Information Technology (IT) Talent Growing According to News Reports
InformationWeek reports that over the last six months, there’s been an across-the-board uptick in all IT jobs posted on Dice.com, and the demand for health IT positions is growing even faster than most, says a company executive.
In the last six months, the total number of IT jobs posted on Dice.com increased by about 17% to about nearly 60,000. At the same time, health IT related positions listed on the job site have jumped about 50%.
According to the InformationWeek interview of Dice.com, as more employers seek new talent for health IT initiatives, Dice.com predicts that those jobs will become increasingly difficult to fill. “These jobs are becoming more and more complex, and there are fewer people to fill them,” he says.
As talent wars begin breaking out, employers will need to pay more attention on retention planning, advices Dice’s Silver. Even if an organization is strapped for money and freezes pay for existing staff, they’ll need to find non-monetary ways of keeping IT talent engaged, even if it’s a matter of professional development and training to keep skills fresh. “There are non-financial ways to retain talent, and that will become critical,” he says.
Meanwhile, median pay in 2009 for mid-level health IT jobs, including programming and database positions, was about $79,600 according to a Dice survey, says Silver. Pay in 2009 was “virtually flat” for all IT jobs–including health IT positions–compared with 2008, according to Dice.com
