John Tricas said he heard opportunity knocking and learned networking software two decades ago, when it was the “next big thing.” Now he senses a similar opening as the health-care overhaul law takes effect. In September, the 56-year-old information-technology worker took a job troubleshooting issues doctors, nurses and other users are having with a new government-funded electronic-records system at a Raleigh, North Carolina, health-care company.
“Normally I wouldn’t have taken this, because I have done things at a higher level,” Tricas said of the recruiting call for the position. “But I said, ’I’ll take it’ because that gets my foot in the door.”
With President Barack Obama’s re-election ensuring that his2010 law will be implemented, companies are scouting for workers like Tricas to fill hundreds of thousands of jobs in everything from running records systems to creating and servicing new insurance exchanges and entering thousands of additional codes for health-care treatments.
The federal government projects that under the law, 30 millionmore Americans will start getting coverage in 2014 through expanded state Medicaid programs or private insurers, or pay a penalty. A study published this month in the Annals of Family Medicine found that the newly insured will contribute to rising demand for medical services, requiring an estimated 8,000 more doctors over 12 years. They also will create jobs for workers in support fields such as IT, already in short supply.
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