Hurry to Reserve Your Room for ACE '09 in Nashville!

Just a reminder to make your reservations now for this year's ACE in Nashville. Rooms at the group rate in the AHDI room block are offered on a first-come, first-served basis, and space is limited, so don't delay! The AHDI group rate for sleeping rooms at the Gaylord Opryland are $161 for single and double occupancy rooms, $181 for triple occupancy, and $201 for quadruple occupancy. You may reserve your hotel room online or by phone.

Gaylord Opryland Resort & Convention Center
2800 Opryland DriveNashville, TN 37214
Make your reservations online
Reservations by phone: 888-777-6779
EVENT CODE: N-AAMT (reference this code to receive group rate)

MT Week Special for AHDI Book of Style

To commemorate MT Week falling in 2009 and our commitment to Knowledge is Everything, we have taken $9 off the gold standard Book of Style for Medical Transcription, 3rd Edition! We have never priced this book so low, and it will only be available at this price through Sunday, May 24th! The discount applies to all healthcare documentation specialists. Get your copy today by using the link below or contacting AHDI toll free at 800-982-2182. A member services representative is ready to assist you. This discount is not congruent with any other discount. Purchase your copy now before the sale ends! Remember, members will need to log in to the website to ensure member pricing.

Purchase Now

WAS $50, NOW $41 for AHDI members
WAS $70, NOW $61 for non-members

National MT Week Greeting from AHDI President Susan Lucci

Happy National Medical Transcriptionist Week 2009!

This is the week that has been set aside for us to celebrate our profession as key contributors on the healthcare delivery team. And although we don’t provide hands-on patient care, the documentation we provide and the quality and completeness in the preparation as well as the quick turnaround time that we provide helps to ensure every member of the team has the information they need to make the next decision for the patient. This is critical not only on this patient encounter but for many subsequent visits and ongoing care. Did you know that we share this week with National Emergency Medical Services? Did you also know that last week was National Women’s Health Week as well as National Hospital Week? It seems that we are in very good company! This year, probably more importantly than any other year, we must collectively and collaboratively be engaged in our careers and profession with healthcare reform agendas rapidly taking shape.

While we take this week to celebrate, let us also take this week to actively shape our future and our evolving roles. Let’s continue to leverage our expertise and stake our claim in this new era of health care.

On behalf of our association, we thank you for your continued interest, support and dedication in playing a vital role in patient safety. You make a difference, every day. Have a great week!

Susan Lucci, RHIT, CMT, AHDI-F
2009 AHDI President

Help Support the Advocacy Summit: Write a Letter to Your Legislator Today!

AHDI realizes that not every member can attend the upcoming Advocacy Summit in Washington, DC. However, AHDI also knows it is important that as many members as possible make their voices heard on Capitol Hill. To help with that effort, AHDI has provided information about writing letters to your federal legislators, including simple instructions and a model letter. Writing letters to your legislators is an easy, quick, and highly effective way to support the Summit and those members who will be coming to DC.If you are still considering attending the Summit, it is not too late to register. You can find more information about the Summit and can register online at the AHDI website. Registration closes this Wednesday, May 13.If you have any questions about letter writing or the Advocacy Summit, please contact Greg Doggett at gdoggett@ahdionline.org or 703-663-8379.

Annual Convention and Expo (Nashville, TN)

Don’t forget to make your reservations at the lovely Gaylord Opryland Resort and Convention Center for the 31st Annual Convention and Exposition. The AHDI group rate is set at $161 single/double occupancy. The conference is scheduled for July 29–August 1, 2009. We have so much in store at this year’s conference that you will be blown away. Our schedule of events and educational presentations are shaping up beautifully. From the Roadhouse Roundup Welcome Reception to a pizza party Scrabble challenge to the Integrity Awards formal event, this will be a meeting you’ll never forget. Register with AHDI today and receive early-bird pricing! Remember, first-timers get a $50 discount and returning attendees can take an additional $20 off a full registration.

The Book of Style for Medical Transcription, 3rd edition, Wins Silver SNAP Excel Award

Network Media Partners, Inc., is being honored by the Society of National Association Publications (SNAP) at it’s 29th Annual EXCEL Awards, which recognize the best and the brightest in association media and publishing. As one of 181 winners selected from nearly 1,000 entries, Network Media Partners is being presented a Silver Award in the Technical Book category for The Book of Style for Medical Transcription, 3rd edition, submitted on behalf of the Association for Healthcare Documentation Integrity (AHDI), for taking bold chances and delivering excellence in the association industry. Network Media Partners, Inc., has partnered with AHDI as the publisher of Plexus and Health Data Matrix magazines as well as The Book of Style for Medical Transcription, 3rd edition. AHDI would like to congratulate Network Media Partners, Inc., on a job well done!

Recertification Course Now Available for RMTs!

The highly anticipated recertification process and course for RMTs is complete, and we are ready to start recredentialing our RMTs. In partnership with OAK Horizons, Inc., AHDI has created a course provides targeted professional development in the core content areas required to maintain the RMT credential. The course includes 11 chapters, each with a concluding quiz. To pass the course and renew the RMT credential, participants must complete all 11 chapters and quizzes, and pass the final exam. This is great news for CMTs, too! CMTs will receive 11 CECs toward your CMT recertification upon successful completion of the course. The credits are broken down as follows: 2 CM, 3 MTT, 3 ML, 2 TW, and 1 PD. That’s nearly half the required credits for a recredentialing cycle.

Visit the policies page for more info: http://www.ahdionline.org/scriptcontent/rRecertification.cfm

2009 MTIA Conference Update

This year’s MTIA Annual Conference was one of the best and most successful conferences in MTIA’s 20-year history. From April 22nd to 25th, people from across the globe converged on Louisville, Kentucky, for four days of informative presentations, great networking, and fun social events. Below are some key issues and strategic priorities discussed during the conference:

• The recently enacted HITECH Act (Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act) and healthcare reform present tremendous opportunities for the clinical documentation sector; however, the sector must be organized and focused, or else it risks squandering those opportunities.
• Attendees wholeheartedly supported a uniform visibility campaign comprised of advocacy to key health policymakers and a public relations strategy focused on the sector’s contribution to quality patient care delivery.
• The HITECH Act will deeply impact the sector, including significant new obligations with respect to HIPAA and data breach notifications.
• "Discrete reportable transcription" can be integrated with EHR technology as a method of increasing EHR adoption, since many physicians prefer the dictation process as a faster means of documenting healthcare encounters over more time consuming point and click, templated documentation approaches.
• Consumers becoming increasingly instrumental in documenting their personal health stories, combined with more outcomes driven data from the provider community, is creating dynamic new business models for the clinical documentation sector.
• The Health Story Project promotes and enhances the value of narrative text in the age of EHRs by producing and encouraging the adoption of standards for the flow of information between common types of healthcare documents and EHRs.
• The SRT Summit generated dialogue concerning the impact of SRT on the clinical documentation sector based on information provided by a sector-wide SRT survey being conducted by MTIA in partnership with AHDI and AHIMA, with the ultimate goal being the creation of a trends and best practices white paper to assist MTSOs with the challenges of purchasing, adopting, and implementing SRT.
• The QA Summit reviewed essential elements of a quality assessment process and outlined key components and metrics in order to begin producing a widely accepted quality standard protocol that will serve the healthcare community as prudent, efficient, cost-effective, valid, reliable, and scalable to ensure quality of all health records.

You still can benefit from some of the valuable information shared at the conference by purchasing a set of CDs containing audio recordings of the speakers’ presentations and, if applicable, their PowerPoint presentations. To purchase the entire collection of CDs for only $129, please visit the webpage of Lawrence Media Group, the company that produced the CDs: http://shop.lawrencemg.com/-c-21_8915.html.

EHR Implementation Experience & Expertise Needed

The Obama administration has placed a high priority on nationwide EHR adoption, and it is more important than ever for our sector to be an empowered partner in meeting this goal. Resources are critically needed to assist the healthcare documentation sector with facilitating and adapting to client migration to EMR/EHR solutions. What contributing factors should be considered/planned for? How can an individual MT or MTSO best assist clients in seamless transition to a transcription-enabled EMR or EHR? It is the goal of the AHDI/MTIA EHR Task Force to develop and release an EHR Readiness Toolkit, a resource guide for our sector in preparing for healthcare’s migration to an electronic health information infrastructure. To that end, the task force seeks to convene two focus groups with EMR/EHR integration experience to provide experiential insight, recommendations, and feedback that can help shape this resource. Approximately 8-10 MTs or transcription managers/supervisors who have experience as employees with facility migration to an EMR/EHR are needed for one focus group, and approximately 8-10 MTSOs or independent contractors who have been part of a client’s migration to an EMR/EHR are needed for the second focus group. We are asking focus group participants to complete a comprehensive questionnaire, participate in 1-2 meetings, and review the toolkit prior to its release. If you are interested and able to participate, please contact Tiffany Wagner (twagner@ahdionline.org or 209-341-2461). A member of the task force will follow up with you.