Working on IT

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act has a host of tight deadlines for its myriad health information technology subsidy and IT network development initiatives. Nearly all of them are timed to help fulfill the ambitious goal set by former President George W. Bush in 2004 and adopted by President Barack Obama last year to make electronic health records available to most Americans by 2014. Not surprisingly, a federally funded health IT workforce training effort is both part of the overall program and caught up in its mad rush.