As many institutions and individual healthcare practitioners are increasingly implementing electronic health records (EMR’s) driven by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) and meaningful use requirements, it is important that management support for these systems is enhanced. As most EMR’s are image enabled, PACS administrators with their current skill set are well positioned to provide this type of support, either in addition to their current positions or as a dedicated support professional.
In order to enhance the skill set of these and other professionals with either a clinical or IT background, PARCA now offers two additional certifications: CPEMS (Certified Professional EMR Specialist), or EMR administrators, and the CHEA (Certified Healthcare Enterprise Architect).
CPEMS candidates need to have a good understanding of electronic health records and how they are used, in addition to EMR standards and the implementation process. CHEA candidates will focus on image enabling, EMR implementation, and require hands-on troubleshooting knowledge.
Candidates for these new certifications can either be PARCA or CIIP certified. How these prerequisites work is explained on the PARCA website or one can contact the PARCA executive secretary at the email below.
Chuck Willis, president of PARCA, says these new certifications are a logical extension to the existing PARCA certification, which was started in 2005 and has been very successful in providing healthcare imaging and IT professionals the ability to demonstrate their skills and be recognized for them through certification.
“These new certifications will allow current healthcare imaging and IT professionals to grow their expertise and enhance their portfolio to be ready for the roll-out of these systems nationwide,” Willis says. “These certifications also allow new professionals who either have an IT or clinical background to learn the skills required to support these systems and prepares these professionals to meet the call of regulators for requiring healthcare support and service personnel to be certified.”
ABOUT PARCA
PARCA is an international, USA based, non-profit organization providing qualified certification programs for healthcare imaging and IT professionals in the PACS and EMR field. Its board of directors has representation from the USA, Canada, Australia and Singapore. For more information on PARCA, contact the executive secretary Tammy Grazer at info@pacsadmin.org.
Tammy Grazer
info@pacsadmin.org
