A long time issue has been this: Where do we find healthcare documentation practitioners and students coming into the field who do not know they have a professioinal association? Who knows best where other MTs are? Existing MTs know other MTs, and their employers know who the MTs are! And how do we get them to take a look at AHDI?
In a campaign just rolling out of our AHDI association, you will see more and more tag lines -- you know, those "sayings" associated with an email signature -- everywhere you look. They will say things like "Want standards? Follow me to AHDI!" and "Need professional resources? Follow me to AHDI!" "Want to become an MT? Follow Me!"
The idea here is to give greater visibility to AHDI and make it an obvious choice as a resource for all things professional. We really do have answers to many of the issues. Just one quick example is the frequent complaint you hear about dictators -- "If someone would please just tell them to speak clearly, calmly and not at 4000 mph!" The result of that request was development of the "Dictation Best Practices Tool Kit." Anyone looking for ways to work more efficiently can check out Benchmark KB for a total resource solution. All that information, all those tools, all those possibilities are there, just waiting for healthcare documentation professionals to utilize.
And when you see something often enough, aren't you just a little bit tempted to check it out? Follow ME to AHDI! And stay tuned in a few short weeks for news of Part II of our campaign.
Thursday, April 2, 2009
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
Expectations
As we swing into this new year -- and it always astonishes me how quickly these months fly by! -- I have to wonder what our expectations are: for the year, for our family, for our friends and certainly for our profession.
I know that Christmas this season past wasn't what I expected. Here in the Portland, Oregon, area we broke 40-year records for how much snow we had. We couldn't get out easily to shop. I know, many people shop over the Internet. But I do not comprehend how I could pick just the right new wool jacket for one of my daughters without seeing it in person. Getting together with friends for the holidays was cancelled or postponed. My Christmas cards went out late because by the third time my husband had to dig his truck out of the snow drifts and the driveway, he didn't go into town to mail them. Our Christmas morning expectations for time with the grandkids simply didn't happen -- too much snow to risk the roads and travel.
Even though the holidays are behind us for 2008, what are our expections for 2009? As president-elect for AHDI this year, what do I expect?
I know what I want to happen: I want to gain an even greater understanding of all the various facets of AHDI. Our puzzle is not an easy one: if you look at all that is involved in striving for quality healthcare documentation, there is education, workforce development, continuing education and, not the least of the list, public and industry understanding of what our knowledge base brings to the legal medical record. For those who say we try to do too much, what would you have us put on the back burner? Which of these pieces is not as important as the others?
I want to work to help others understand the larger picture. As entrenched as we become in our day to day operations and work flow, we simply have to realize that we cannot exist in a vacuum with only immediate issues at the forefront. We must continue to speak up for our profession and understand that it is evolving all around us, while some of us are digging our heels in and insisting that we don't want to be expected to change.
AHDI continues to speak to vendors, to the Dept of Labor, to the Justice Dept, to those involved in healthcare documentation, to the Dept of Defense, to the AMA, to everyone and anyone who will listen that OUR workforce understands what needs to go into medical records, and furthermore what ends up in those records without our attention and care.
If you are one of those who find yourself in a room of 500, with only a couple of people there who understand what it is you contribute to their medical records, my question to you is this: What are you doing about it?
Yes, I expect every one of us to look for opportunities to speak up this year, and AHDI and I will help you gather the words if you are having any problem getting your thoughts in order. And I expect we will work together on public understanding of why we are an important part of the work force and the quality everyone expects in their medical records.
What are your professional expectations for this year?
I know that Christmas this season past wasn't what I expected. Here in the Portland, Oregon, area we broke 40-year records for how much snow we had. We couldn't get out easily to shop. I know, many people shop over the Internet. But I do not comprehend how I could pick just the right new wool jacket for one of my daughters without seeing it in person. Getting together with friends for the holidays was cancelled or postponed. My Christmas cards went out late because by the third time my husband had to dig his truck out of the snow drifts and the driveway, he didn't go into town to mail them. Our Christmas morning expectations for time with the grandkids simply didn't happen -- too much snow to risk the roads and travel.
Even though the holidays are behind us for 2008, what are our expections for 2009? As president-elect for AHDI this year, what do I expect?
I know what I want to happen: I want to gain an even greater understanding of all the various facets of AHDI. Our puzzle is not an easy one: if you look at all that is involved in striving for quality healthcare documentation, there is education, workforce development, continuing education and, not the least of the list, public and industry understanding of what our knowledge base brings to the legal medical record. For those who say we try to do too much, what would you have us put on the back burner? Which of these pieces is not as important as the others?
I want to work to help others understand the larger picture. As entrenched as we become in our day to day operations and work flow, we simply have to realize that we cannot exist in a vacuum with only immediate issues at the forefront. We must continue to speak up for our profession and understand that it is evolving all around us, while some of us are digging our heels in and insisting that we don't want to be expected to change.
AHDI continues to speak to vendors, to the Dept of Labor, to the Justice Dept, to those involved in healthcare documentation, to the Dept of Defense, to the AMA, to everyone and anyone who will listen that OUR workforce understands what needs to go into medical records, and furthermore what ends up in those records without our attention and care.
If you are one of those who find yourself in a room of 500, with only a couple of people there who understand what it is you contribute to their medical records, my question to you is this: What are you doing about it?
Yes, I expect every one of us to look for opportunities to speak up this year, and AHDI and I will help you gather the words if you are having any problem getting your thoughts in order. And I expect we will work together on public understanding of why we are an important part of the work force and the quality everyone expects in their medical records.
What are your professional expectations for this year?
Sunday, September 30, 2007
What's In a Name -- Revisionist?
I was reading a recent article on speech recognition technology making a strong comeback, improving patient care and productivity. A contributing expert asserted that medical transcriptionists are now called "revisionists."
This was a new one for me! And yet, I shouldn't be surprised. We as a group of medical transcriptionists seem to be the last to be told that we are no longer MTs. We are medical language specialists, we are medical editors, we are document integrity specialists, we are backend speech recognition verifiers, we are ... what? Where is our identity?
We continue to understand best what we do. I visited with an MT and her husband one morning in Reno at the annual meeting. She asked what I thought of the name change to AHDI and then told me what she thought: “We have spent so many years explaining to everyone what we do, and we were finally getting some understanding. Now we have to explain AHDI?”
After that conversation, someone said that the message we need to be spreading is not what we do, but why it is important. We have spent years hearing the joking at various gatherings that we have a truly dead-end job because “transcription is going away!” And I have to ask: What have we gained with all these years of explaining what we do? Fewer questions at cocktail parties?
Technology vendors continue to try and sell chief financial officers on eliminating their transcription costs. Healthcare providers are beginning to do their own documentation in some arenas with I think ridiculous results. Any one of us can point to almost daily encounters with misspeaks in dictation that involve drug names, doses, diagnoses.. the list of course goes on and on. And the spelling!
I have to believe that respect for our position as the key piece in quality documentation and
verifiers of the content accuracy will continue to gain momentum. There simply has to come a point when the inaccuracies currently appearing will tip the balance back to an understanding that we revisionists have an important role in "capturing America's Heathcare story." Until then, we can
continue to work our magic on documentation for the sake of accuracy and quality patient care,
but we also need to each speak up about why it is important.
This was a new one for me! And yet, I shouldn't be surprised. We as a group of medical transcriptionists seem to be the last to be told that we are no longer MTs. We are medical language specialists, we are medical editors, we are document integrity specialists, we are backend speech recognition verifiers, we are ... what? Where is our identity?
We continue to understand best what we do. I visited with an MT and her husband one morning in Reno at the annual meeting. She asked what I thought of the name change to AHDI and then told me what she thought: “We have spent so many years explaining to everyone what we do, and we were finally getting some understanding. Now we have to explain AHDI?”
After that conversation, someone said that the message we need to be spreading is not what we do, but why it is important. We have spent years hearing the joking at various gatherings that we have a truly dead-end job because “transcription is going away!” And I have to ask: What have we gained with all these years of explaining what we do? Fewer questions at cocktail parties?
Technology vendors continue to try and sell chief financial officers on eliminating their transcription costs. Healthcare providers are beginning to do their own documentation in some arenas with I think ridiculous results. Any one of us can point to almost daily encounters with misspeaks in dictation that involve drug names, doses, diagnoses.. the list of course goes on and on. And the spelling!
I have to believe that respect for our position as the key piece in quality documentation and
verifiers of the content accuracy will continue to gain momentum. There simply has to come a point when the inaccuracies currently appearing will tip the balance back to an understanding that we revisionists have an important role in "capturing America's Heathcare story." Until then, we can
continue to work our magic on documentation for the sake of accuracy and quality patient care,
but we also need to each speak up about why it is important.
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