The American workforce is currently confronting a two-pronged assault on their job stability – outsourcing increasingly sending jobs overseas and economic woes decimating retirement accounts of more experienced employees. As a result, many workers, especially those who are nearing retirement, are finding they need to work longer than they had originally anticipated.

Some Americans have experienced significant challenges in working alongside, and competing with, younger employees who may have innate advantages over them.

"I always have the feeling that I have to prove my value all the time," communications specialist Paula Symons told The Associated Press. "That I'm not some old relic who doesn't understand social media or can't learn some new technique."

Should more individuals work until late in life, long-term care providers may need to alter their strategies for administering care. If workers pine for a more active lifestyle that includes part-time work, facilities may need to offer them more active activities that they would desire.

Individuals who work later into their lives may also need to expend more energy as they enter retirement age, perhaps leaving them at elevated risk for health problems than they would have confronted had they retired earlier.

For example, a construction worker may inhale more foreign substances than he or she would have had retirement come earlier in life. The problem could be compounded if that person's retirement fund had been depleted and healthcare is more difficult to pay for.

A long-term care consultant would be aware of changing dynamics among retirees and able to advise care providers as to best practices for retired members of the Baby Boom generation.

During the TechCrunch Disrupt conference last September, companies made presentations about their products and were judged based on the quality of their service. The judges were quite fond of Cake Health for a variety of reasons.

"[It's] the most viable business, the biggest market," investor Brad Garlinghouse told Inc.com. "I think this is meant for this space. [Healthcare] is a disaster currently. I try not to deal with it when I get those [bills] in the mail. I have no idea what they say."

Writing for the news source, Christina DesMarais said that health startups are expected to expand significantly this year. With new health problems and treatments emerging all the time, new ideas need to be formulated to meet these demands.

Patients may also need to be more active in their own treatments. While personal health records (PHRs) have not yet been utilized to their full potential, as evidenced in part by the failure of a PHR initiative launched by Google in 2008, patients have shown a desire to manage some of their own health information. They just have not yet taken full responsibility for managing these systems.

Just as patients struggle with the intricacies of healthcare, so too do some healthcare professionals. The complicated nature of health IT may be at least partially responsible for the somewhat delayed adoption of electronic medical records and other IT tools since widespread healthcare reform in 2009. By using a healthcare IT consulting service, healthcare facilities can address many of their problems related to IT integration.

A revealing study by the National Partnership for Women and Families (NPWF) finds many positive takeaways from proponents of health IT, even though the organization warns of "potential landmines" in the future.

Exposure to electronic medical records seems to greatly affect how a patient views the technology. Only 6 percent of respondents whose doctors use EMRs were unsatisfied with that system, while about 75 percent of patients whose doctors use paper records said they wanted them to switch to an electronic system. Overall, upwards of 80 percent of respondents whose doctors use either paper and electronic records each said they thought EMRs would be useful.

Still, even though most respondents said they trusted their doctors with their health information, about half of respondents said laws do not currently provide adequate protection from data breaches, while about 60 percent believed that widespread adoption of EMRs could cause a spike in compromised health information.

These concerns may be valid, considering a Redspin report cited by InformationWeek Healthcare found that health data breaches increased 97 percent last year.

"Patients are also saying the success of advanced information technology rests on a foundation of trust that must be vigilantly protected," Farzad Mostashari, the National Coordinator for Health IT, told Healthcare IT News. "Encouraging the adoption and meaningful use of electronic health records is important, but the ultimate goal should be to leverage information technology in ways that lead to higher quality care, more coordinated care and care that is truly patient-centered."

A healthcare IT consulting service provider may help to allay the fears of healthcare professionals concerned about security of electronic medical records by advising them as to best practices regarding the handling of these files.

The American Medical Association (AMA) has been vocal in its opposition to the current ICD-10 conversion timeline, first through a formal internal vote to call for the timeline's extension, followed by repeated press releases expressing its discontent.

CMS administrator Marilyn Tavenner spoke at an AMA conference in Washington, D.C. earlier this week and informed the audience that CMS would take another look at the current requirements for ICD-10 conversion. Tavenner stressed that her primary goal is to ease the administrative burden that medical facilities have had to confront as they integrate ICD-10.

Other organizations, like the American Health Information Management Association (AHIMA), have previously expressed vehement opposition to AMA's position on the grounds that embracing the new coding set goes hand-in-hand with sweeping healthcare reform brought about by the Affordable Care Act of 2009.

"How long are we willing to use a coding system that doesn't work for us and that prevents us moving forward with meaningful comparative-effectiveness research and ultimately evidence-based medicine?," Anthelio Healthcare Solutions chief medical officer Wendy Whittington told Healthcare IT News. "The decision to put off ICD-10 is a setback in modernizing our healthcare system and brings more uncertainty into an already chaotic environment."

Should CMS adhere to the original ICD-10 deadline, medical facilities will face more pressure to convert to the new coding system. Some may have delayed integration in hopes that the deadline will be extended, so those facilities may need the advice of a healthcare IT consulting service to expedite that process.

The 2009 Affordable Care Act has made primary care physicians even more important, as an millions of previously uninsured Americans seek general practice doctors. But, many medical school students are flocking to specialized practice, not general practice.

Specialists make substantially more money than primary care physicians over the course of their careers – $3.5 million more, according to The Washington Post. Doctors have responded by choosing to practice in narrow specialties, which boast significantly higher compensation rates. For example, while a general practice physician makes about $209,000 annually, the average cardiologist has a $423,000 yearly salary, according to the Association of American Medical Colleges.

"No matter what specialty you're going into, your medical education costs the same," Glen Stream, president of the American Academy of Family Physician Stream, told the newspaper. "Think about a medical student who is sort of interested in primary care and has got $250,000 in debt. People are often driven by financial incentives, and you basically get the outcome that you incent."

Although the number of primary care physicians increased by 20 percent from 2009 to 2011, if current trends hold, experts anticipate a shortage of more than 130,000 doctors by 2035.

If a significant deficit does occur, medical facilities may need to rely on health IT to fill the care gap. Some tools, such as remote monitoring, can help physicians treat patients simultaneously and more efficiently in general. To learn how to use these tools properly, doctors may need to seek advice from a physician consultant.

Since the economic recession began several years ago, an abundance of media attention has been devoted to the plight of young people. Just last week, a Pew Research Poll found that 46 percent of 18- to 24-year-olds are currently unemployed. Many of these individuals are living with their parents and nearly 20 percent of all households have young adults living with their parents, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

On the other end of the spectrum are elderly individuals, who are experiencing similar challenges, albeit for different reasons. Last week, this blog discussed the emergence of multi-use living spaces for soon-to-be retirees who wish to maintain many aspects of the lives they had before entering a long-term facility.

Because of the cost of living in these facilities though, some families have tried to care for elderly relatives in their own homes. As a result, builders have begun constructing new homes that are more conducive to these conditions.

"Many builders have accepted, at this point, that for both cultural and economic reasons, families are nowadays living with grandmothers, in-laws and grown children who have not yet gone out on their own and started their own households," according to The Wall Street Journal.

Should grandparents continue to live in the homes of their own children, the long-term care system in the United States could experience a fundamental shift. A healthcare IT consulting professional may be required by parents to help show families how new technology can be used to monitor elderly residents while the rest of the family is at work or school.

Depending on a healthcare facility's preference, electronic medical records can provide basic records-keeping services, or come equipped with more advanced features, such as electronic medical scheduling software or e-prescribing abilities. Still, for a variety of reasons, many heathcare facilities are simply not on board with these upgrades.

Experts believe that these facilities may be reluctant to adopt upgrades to certain electronic prescribing software programs because of the cost of instituting these additional features. The appeal of health IT systems is that they reduce long-term medical costs and boost patient health, but in the short-term, the high upfront costs and greater potential for errors could jeopardize patient health.

Some healthcare facilities may simply lack the staff to fully implement all aspects of health IT into their current service platforms. Staff must be sufficient in number, and must also be adequately trained in order for health IT to be successful.

"Practices with the most success in getting patients to use new tools introduce [them] in the exam room," Syracuse, New York physician Rosemarie Nelson told American Medical News. "The nurse explains the what, why, etc."

Training, along with advice on which health IT platforms are truly necessary for a particular facility, can be provided by a healthcare IT consulting service. This professional will guarantee that health executives understand the importance of these services and be able to impart knowledge about them to the rest of their workers.

According to architects who have worked on long-term care facilities that will cater to new clients, managers of these buildings have increasingly been requesting more contemporary designs and features that are not always common in retirement communities.

"What we're seeing in a lot of cases is that our clients are trying to bring designs into this next generation of architecture and planning where we don't want our communities and our floor plans to look like the house mom and dad moved into, and certainly not the one we put grandma into 25 years ago," Manny Gonzalez, a California architect with KTGY Group, told Senior Housing News.

Some of the amenities that seniors will come to demand include video game systems like the Nintendo Wii, which allows users to remain active without the assistance of a trainer. Some residents have even requested gardens, pet-washing areas and workshops, so they can maintain some semblance of their lives before they moved into these communities.

In general, residents of these communities have shown that they want mixed-use facilities that allow them to complete varied daily tasks in close proximity. A long-term care consultant can help these long-term care providers determine what specific amenities need to be integrated into new facilities, while a healthcare IT consulting service may be able to suggest the best health IT tools that will all physicians to monitor clients around-the-clock.

Healthcare facilities that want to expedite their use of health IT tools and evolve beyond the primitive stages of development should contact a healthcare IT consulting service to set a pace for the adoption of these platforms.

Software IT analyst Shahid Shah told Healthcare IT News that the healthcare industry has a ways to go before electronic medical records and similar tools can produce the benefits that many of their proponents believe are possible.

These stages – independent care, connected care, coordinated care, integrated care and accountable care – require healthcare facilities to progressively study, mine and exchange patient data to enhance care systems. Adoption of these tools is not enough. Only when healthcare facilities interact with one another will health IT truly be declared a success.

"Coordination and collaboration aren't just about adding patient messaging and simple health records sharing – in fact, they must become managers of digital biology and digital chemistry and be able to use that new data to help physicians across patient care teams better comprehend what is happening inside the patient so that they can actually improve health outcomes," Shah told the news source.

Shah has previously said that electronic medical records and other health IT tools must evolve from "electronic typewriters" to devices that interact with one another across different healthcare facilities. Only when coordinated care is possible will patients achieve maximum benefits from health IT.

To realize these advantages, healthcare facilities should employ a physician consultant to help them build upon their previous health IT accomplishments.

Last week, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released two reports, each of which contained positive takeaways for those in the healthcare industry. The first report predicted that health jobs would expand as demand for these professionals increase. Between now and 2020, BLS anticipates 607,000 new personal care aides, 712,000 more registered nurses and 706,000 home health aides.

"One-third of the projected fastest growing occupations are related to healthcare, reflecting expected increases in demand as the population ages and the healthcare and social assistance industry grows," according to a BLS press release.

The bureau also released the most recent overall unemployment numbers and trends last week. In January, the healthcare industry was responsible for 31,000 of the total 243,000 new jobs created – 13 percent. On the whole, unemployment dropped to 8.3 percent last month from 8.5 percent in December and 9.1 percent in August.

Should healthcare facilities continue to add jobs at this rate, they may become overrun if they don't have an experienced consultant on hand to help them through the process of teaching new employees how the facility functions. A healthcare IT consulting service may even be required to help new staff members get on-board with medical equipment that may be unfamiliar to them.