Over 314,000 Jobs in Healthcare Created in 2011

There were 22,600 jobs added in the healthcare industry for the month of December, helping the industry finish the year on a strong note. There were a total of 314,700 jobs added in the healthcare industry in 2011. For the overall economy of the country, the industry accounted for nearly one in five new jobs, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

There were 9,800 new jobs in December in hospitals and 89,100 new jobs in hospitals for all of 2011. This number is more than double the number of jobs created by hospitals in 2010, which was 37,300.

“Last year, 2011, was a very good year for St. Luke’s Health System. It’s going to be more of the same in 2012,” said Dawn Murphy, the senior vice president of human resources. The St. Luke’s Health System features 10 hospitals in Kansas City, Missouri, and employees 9,500 people.

“We are adding staff, particularly nurses, because of our facilities’ expanding. We have seen volume increases and that have stimulated our hiring,” Murphy said. “We are also an attractive employer and that has always helped us. People want to work here. We received over 100,000 applications for employment last year and we filled 2,000 positions.”

Chris Roederer, the senior vice president of human resources for Tampa General Hospital says the following:

“It is going to be one of the more difficult years in our history, and we don’t expect it to get easier. The pressure is going to continue. It’s very unfortunate. We worked hard to get the reputation we have,” Roederer said. “One has been positions related to the implementation and optimization of our electronic health records. Our IT area has grown substantially to meet that need. Another area has been in ambulatory services, our primary care centers, and even the employment of physicians. It has been reasonably difficult to fill positions but we are getting there. There is substantial competition for primary care physicians and I expect that to be difficult in years to come as hospitals build their primary care networks. The IT positions with hospitals, the demand for that specialty and recruiting and retaining those people is going to be even more difficult. They are so specialized and in such high demand. We are finding that already,” he said.

One of the challenges in 2012 will continue to be the search for clinicians with IT competency, according to Murphy.

“The IT department is always in search of the person who has the combination of clinical and IT skills with all that is going on with healthcare reform,” she says. “That has been a focus for us over the past year: to recruit clinical people internally if they are interested in IT, and externally the people who have that magical combination of a clinical background with IT expertise. They are hard to find, which is why we try to grow our own when we can. For those of us looking outside the people with advanced skills in that area, it’s a finite pool and we are competing for the same pool,” she said.