AHDI Lounge

Lea Sims, CMT, AHDI-F has written a great article for ADVANCE for Health Information Professionals on the topic of advocating for the preservation of America's health story through accurate and thorough healthcare documentation. The message AHDI and CDIA will be bringing to legislators during the 2011 Advocacy Summit on May 3 & 4 in Washington, D.C. is that every American citizen has a health story, and we can't afford to lose it. Lea lays out a number of issues the two organizations will be emphasizing to our elected officials and their staffs:

• The need for a federal requirement for EHR systems to receive transcribed reports generated from narrative dictation so that physicians can document a patient's full health story and still meet federal requirements for EHR adoption.
• The availability of existing innovative technologies that will convert narrative text into the kind of codified data required by EHR systems.
• The role of the documentation knowledge worker in partnering with physicians and these emerging technologies to ensure that the focus is not just on how health information is captured but also on how well and how accurately it's being recorded.
• The need for federal funding for workforce development to ensure the skills of healthcare documentation professionals will continue to play a relevant and contributory role in the healthcare documentation process.

Lea also provides practical steps healthcare documentation professionals can take to support this advocacy effort, including becoming credentialed, preparing for emerging roles in healthcare documentation, staying current on regulatory compliance, and actively advocating for the importance of our sector in preserving America's health story.

Also included in Lea's article are a couple of links to promotional materials that should prove very useful in advocacy efforts. One is a poster entitled, "Capturing America's Healthcare Story."



The other link is to the AHDI/CDIA Advocacy Agenda which contains a wealth of information and focused talking points. Both of these resources can be used by working MTs in our own spheres of influence to make the case for the value of what we do. As important as it is to lobby our legislators in Washington, the real work of advocacy has to happen at the grassroots level in order to educate the healthcare industry and the public at large about the critical importance of an accurate patient story.

Jay Vance, CMT
AHDI Lounge Administrator/Moderator

These are the titles of two related articles by Seth Godin (here and here). Godin's premises are simple and extremely profound all at the same time: the Industrial Revolution is over, America's (and the world's) workers are faced with a new paradigm, and only the brave will succeed.

Here are some salient quotes from the first article:

"It's one thing to read about the changes the internet brought, it's another to experience them. People who thought they had a valuable skill or degree have discovered that being an anonymous middleman doesn't guarantee job security. Individuals who were trained to comply and follow instructions have discovered that the deal is over... and it isn't their fault, because they've always done what they were told.

This isn't fair of course. It's not fair to train for years, to pay your dues, to invest in a house or a career and then suddenly see it fade.

It's unpleasant, it's not fair, but it's all we've got. The sooner we realize that the world has changed, the sooner we can accept it and make something of what we've got. Whining isn't a scalable solution."

In the second article, Godin offers what he calls "an opportunity, not a solution" to the crises he describes in part 1:

"[E]very individual, self-employed or with a boss, is now more in charge of her destiny than ever before. The notion of a company town or a stagnant industry with little choice is fading fast.

Right before your eyes, a fundamentally different economy, with different players and different ways to add value is being built. What used to be an essential asset (for a person or for a company) is worth far less, while new attributes are both scarce and valuable.

Are there dislocations? There's no doubt about it. Pain and uncertainty and risk, for sure.

If you're looking for 'how', if you're looking for a map, for a way to industrialize the new era, you've totally missed the point and you will end up disappointed. The nature of the last era was that repetition and management of results increased profits. The nature of this one is the opposite: if someone can tell you precisely what to do, it's too late. Art and novelty and innovation cannot be reliably and successfully industrialized."

How much of this is relevant to our industry, or to the individual working MT, would be a great topic of discussion. But it seems clear to me that Godin is onto something here, and we would do well to pay attention.

Jay Vance, CMT
AHDI Lounge Administrator/Moderator

It's no secret in our industry that large transcription service providers are looking for economies of scale when it comes to new clients. That means hospitals, large clinics and group practices are the targets of choice for national MTSO sales personnel, and take it from someone who knows, the competition is fierce out there. So where does that leave one- or two-person physician practices and small transcription service providers? I think there's a case to be made that they are MFEO.

(That's "made for each other" for you non-"Sleepless In Seattle" fans, if there could possibly be any of those!)

My wife Carol and I cut our MT teeth on the local physician transcription market in the city where we live; at one time we had 15 local clients and a number of subcontractors working for us. Nowadays I work for a top-10 national MTSO, so it's fair to say I've seen how this business works from both sides of the fence. Certainly there have been a lot of acquisitions and consolidation in recent years in our industry, and there's no doubt a larger percentage of medical transcription is being done by corporate service providers than in times past. But there are still opportunities for the small MT operator to make a good living providing a level of personal service larger companies find it difficult to match. Over the past decade I've had the pleasure of getting to know a number of individuals who operate small transcription services, and some of them are doing very well for themselves, even in this bad economy.

The truth is that, all the hoopla over electronic medical records notwithstanding, there will always be some physicians who for one reason or another will choose dictation and transcription as their documentation method of choice. In fact, I came across an interesting study not long ago from Healthcare IT News that shows that less than two-thirds of pediatricians, OB-GYNs and psychiatrists in private practice will be eligible for the government's EMR stimulus money. Overall, around 15% of all private-practice doctors don't qualify for the incentive and don't have an EMR. Of course, no doubt some doctors who aren't eligible for the stimulus money will end up getting EMRs, but on the other hand, some who are, won't. Furthermore, while we all have horror stories about doctors (or their office manager wives) who can make a transcriptionist's life miserable, there are still physicians out there who care about quality and are willing to pay a decent price to get it. And because servicing small practices simply isn't cost-effective for large MT service providers, I'm confident there will continue to be growth opportunities for smaller, nimbler, more service-oriented transcription operations.

Jay Vance, CMT
AHDI Lounge Administrator/Moderator

Have you ever listened to a doctor dictate at the speed of light and wonder to yourself, "Do they learn that in medical school, or what?!" Well, as it turns out, maybe they do!

The latest in a series of open letters to the medical transcription industry, "Let's Talk About...Advocacy," has been written by Karen Fox, CMT, AHDI-F. Karen's letter examines the definition of an advocate (just about everyone is an advocate for something), explains why advocacy and alliance-building are important, and gives examples of how AHDI and other organizations are stepping up to the plate to give medical transcriptionists a voice in the discussion surrounding healthcare documentation. Karen responds to those who say AHDI's advocacy efforts are a useless waste of time and resources, and looks at some key alliances AHDI is working to forge with other organizations with common interests.

"Let's Talk About...Advocacy" is the third in a series of four articles leading up to an online AHDI Town Hall meeting on the topic of "The Value of Association" to be held Tuesday, April 19 at 4 p.m. Pacific/7 p.m. Eastern, hosted by Barb Marques and Ava George. Karen's letter is also very timely with regard to AHDI's upcoming Advocacy Summit scheduled for May 3-4, 2011, in Washington, D.C.

Jay Vance, CMT
AHDI Lounge Administrator/Moderator

With more and more attention being focused on HIPAA/HITECH compliance for business associates, including medical transcriptionists, I thought it would be interesting to get a sense of the state of the industry with regard to backing up computer data. Please take a couple of minutes to complete the following survey. The survey is completely anonymous; not even your IP address will be collected. Check back next week for a report on the results.

The latest in a series of open letters to the medical transcription industry, entitled, "Let's Talk About...Quality," has been authored by Susan Lucci, RHIT, CMT, AHDI-F, and Kristin Hagen, CPHIT, CPEHR, CPHIE, AHDI-F. In this article, Susan and Kristin approach the topic of quality from the patient's perspective, in the context of the push toward electronic health records and greater patient participation in the healthcare delivery process. They point out the value of the Healthcare Documentation Quality Assessment and Management Best Practices Tool Kit, developed jointly by AHDI, MTIA, and AHIMA, in helping to promote quality in healthcare documentation. The authors also point out that even though it may seem that quality is of lesser value than pricing to some clients, the importance of accurate medical records is of great concern to consumers of healthcare services. Furthermore, as experts in the field of healthcare documentation, medical transcriptionists bring added value to the documentation process.