STORMING CAPITOL HILL FOR MTs

All I can say is “WOW” what an experience. This year we seemed better prepared for our mission to Capitol Hill and, for that, Karen Fox is to be thanked along with all of the individual state legislative coordinators.

I feel we came, we saw, and we conquered. Even the “first-timers” were becoming more and more involved as the visits increased. We met with multiple legislative aides in the House and in the Senate as well as many actual elected representatives. In fact, one Florida congresswoman is considering authoring legislation specifically for the medical transcription industry.

This proposed legislation is needed to allow AHDI-approved schools access to CAA funding [or any other funding earmarked for medical transcription training] whether they accept Title IV funding or not. We are asking that the legislation eliminate the Title IV funding prerequisite. The AHDI/AHIMA school approval process for this profession should be the prerequisite and not Title IV funding.

Obviously, our reasons for needing an exemption from the Title IV prerequisite is that our ACCP-approved schools have met stringent criteria prior to being granted approval based on many factors, not the least of which, is their individual curriculum. This is not the case with many training programs approved by other entities.

I remain cautiously optimistic that this proposed legislation will actually become law and will solidify AHDI’s position in medical transcription education.

Another legislator from Oregon will consider authoring legislation that will require that a qualified [possibly credentialed] MT verify and authenticate documents added to any electronic health record including by traditional means and via back-end speech recognition.

If anyone reading this blog had to miss the Advocacy Summit this year, start saving your money now for next year. I promise you it will be an experience of a lifetime!

CALIFORNIA DREAMIN'

A "Clear View of the Future" was evident at the MTIA Conference last week in Long Beach, California. This theme was especially clear in presentations given by both Jim Klein and Dr. Jeff Goldsmith on "The Future of Electronic Clinical Documents" and panel discussions on speech recognition, turn-around time, etc.

The exhibit hall was packed with vendors selling products that will streamline business practices well into the future. Attendees definitely left feeling educated, informed, and full of new ideas for the future. Ken Shafer, Membership Council Chair [and my boss], was so inspired that he created a MTIA video onsite at the conference. You can view that video here. For those of you who missed this conference, you truly did miss out on an exciting event.

Start preparing now for the 20th Anniversary conference that will be held in Louisville, Kentucky, April 22-26, 2009. If you’d like to purchase a conference DVD or CD, they will be available on the website at www.mtia.com, along with conference pictures by the week’s end.

Many thanks do out to all of our speakers, attendees, and Board of Directors for an excellent show but most notably the conference sponsors: Medquist, DicTran, 3M, Spheris, Webmedx, Philips Speech Recognition Systems, MD-IT, Medical Voice Technology Services, Sten-Tel, TRS Institute, Career Step, and M-TEC [who was awarded the Industry Support Award].