Kirkwood Receives Federal Grant for Health Information Training

Kirkwood Will Train the Trainers

Kirkwood Community College will soon launch a training program to boost skills and advance careers in health information technology.  A grant from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services will put more than $500,000 toward training programs for IT professionals in hospital, clinical and other health-care settings.

Kirkwood is one of 17 community colleges across the Midwest putting the training program into action. The grant provides $512,000 in Kirkwood support for two years of training sessions. The educational program will focus on non-credit, short-term training.

A key part of the Kirkwood program will be "train the trainer" projects, getting qualified personnel ready to build skills in a number of other locations. Key employment areas to be developed in Eastern Iowa include implementation support specialists and technical/software support staff.

Kirkwood expects to prepare about 75 trainers a year, or 150 by the summer of 2012. The entire Midwest consortium expects to train more than 5,400 individuals in that time period.