Panel Discussion at ACE 2010 - The Sky’s the Limit

Future Roles for the Evolving MT

Facilitator: Ava Marie George, CMT, AHDI-F

Panelists: Michael Clark; Sherry Doggett; Kathy Dominguez, CMT, AHDI-F; Sherry Martin, CMT

Our industry is rapidly changing, largely in response to the HITECH Act. Transcription roles are evolving, and we need to focus our attention on skills needed to advance our profession in order to meet the needs of new hybrid roles being created. Our future is likely to require higher education and credentialing. Panelists will be discussing new jobs and roles in private practice, in MTSO companies, and in the hospital setting as well as providing insight into possible roles of the future, education needed to perform those roles, and credentialing in this new HIM future.

This panel discussion will take place on Saturday, August 7, 2010.

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View ACE 2010 Interactive Schedule

ACE 2010 Presentation Highlight: Donald Mon, PhD

HIT and Interoperability: The Important Role of Medical Transcription
Thursday, August 5
CE Credit: 1 CM

This presentation will provide a review of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) and the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clincal Health (HITECH) Act and how it sets the stage for health IT and interoperability. Dr. Mon will highlight the areas in which the medical transcription sector can play a critical role. Read Dr. Mon’s biography.

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HITECH Survey: Providers Remain Concerned About HIPAA Breach Notifications

HITECH compliance for business associates (BAs) has come and gone. The date for BAs to comply with the HIPAA Security Rule and the use and disclosures provision of the privacy rule was February 17. Further, breach notification enforcement begins February 22.

So where does your organization stand? Are you ready? Your BAs? We can give you a pretty good idea after seeing the results of HCPro’s HIPAA and HITECH survey that was rolled out the past two weeks. It attracted nearly 600 respondents, including mostly HIPAA compliance officers and HIM directors.

For starters, if your organization has done something with its HIPAA compliance program in light of the HITECH, you’re in the majority: 89% said they’ve responded. Read more at HealthLeadersMedia.com.

Reid Drops Health IT Provision From Senate Job-Creation Bill

Health IT advocates and stakeholders from the health care industry have pledged to lobby to reinstate into a Senate jobs bill an amendment that would have made hospital-based physicians who provide outpatient care eligible to receive incentive payments for electronic health record usage under the HITECH Act, Modern Healthcare reports. The EHR incentive payments were included in the federal economic stimulus package last year. Read the full iHealthBeat story.

Breach Prevention is Critical as HIPAA Compliance Worlds Collide

Privacy and security officers have to comply with more rules than ever. The Federal Trade Commission’s Red Flags rule, existing HIPAA laws, and the new Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act require that covered entities:

• Protect patient information with technical, administrative, and physical safeguards (HIPAA)


• Lessen the negative effect of unauthorized disclosure (HIPAA)


• Notify patients within 60 days of breaches that involve unsecure personal health information (PHI) and pose a significant risk of financial, reputational, or other harm (HITECH; enforcement effective February 17)


• Inform HHS of breaches (HITECH; enforcement effective February 17)


• Establish an identity theft prevention program with policies and procedures to detect, prevent, and mitigate identity theft (Red Flags Rule; enforcement effective June 1)

Read more at Health Media Leaders.

2009 Advocacy Summit: Looking Back and Moving Forward

At last week’s Advocacy Summit, AHDI and MTIA members from across the United States had well over 100 appointments and delivered in excess of 200 letters to Capitol Hill to educate legislators on how the medical transcription sector can help achieve the HITECH Act’s vision of a nationwide, interoperable electronic health record (EHR) system. Members discussed the need for federal legislators and administrative agency officials to recognize the critical role documentation professionals and the sector play in ensuring quality of care, patient safety, and proper reimbursement in an electronic health environment.

The Obama Administration is advancing a definition and criteria for "meaningful use" of electronic health records by July of this year to use in determining the funding guidelines for EHR adoption. MTIA and AHDI believe there is a critically narrow window of opportunity for this sector to ensure that such criteria include provisions for the evolving role of transcription in hybrid capture, where complex narrative is preserved and quality outcomes, not just fiscal savings, drive adoption and integration. The HIT vendor community is positioning itself around key decision-makers in the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), in whose hands the determination of "meaningful use" now resides. Inarguably, the primary interest of those vendors is in securing widespread EHR adoption through HITECH provisions, and our message to legislators is that DHHS needs others at the decision-making table whose interest is geared more toward how these technologies will be deployed, not whether they will be deployed.

Defining "meaningful use" is not the role of HIT but rather of clinicians and experts in healthcare documentation who can speak to the document workflow process and the complexities of capturing health stories in a way that informs clinical decision-making and promotes coordination of care. If the "meaningful use" definition is shaped only by the vendor community, there is great risk for EHR deployment to fall short of health care’s goals for capturing and consuming health information. All stakeholders, most importantly the patient, lose under such an imprudent integration approach.

To that end, MTIA and AHDI will be engaging the services of a lobbying firm, Dewey Square Group (DSG), to assist us in delivering our message to key members of Congress, as well as those in DHHS, who will ultimately be responsible for the "meaningful use" definition. In addition, in partnership with the membership and DSG, we will continue to drive this message and our recommendations to Dr. David Blumenthal, the National Coordinator for Health IT, so that the role of transcription is not left out of EHR integration standards, recommendations, and regulations.

Thank you to everyone who supported the 2009 Advocacy Summit. Your voice on Capitol Hill and involvement were critical to keeping the profession and sector visible to lawmakers and in making this important event a success. To review the documents members used to take their message to Capitol Hill, please visit the Advocacy Summit 2009 Tool Kit on either the AHDI Web site or MTIA Web site. Materials include the Abstract for a Dictation Error Study revealing the crucial role that MTs play in correcting dictation errors and ensuring the accuracy of patients’ health records.

Medical Transcription: Proven Accelerator of EHR Adoption

The recently enacted Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act (HITECH Act) of 2009 represents an important first step towards achieving the vision of a nationwide, fully interoperable electronic health record (EHR) system. However, the gap between that vision and current reality remains wide. Many healthcare providers still use paper records. Other providers have tried to implement EHR systems, but unfortunately, many such projects have failed. "Industry experts agree that failure rates of electronic medical record (EMR) implementations range from 50 to 80 percent." Clearly, the challenges of EHR adoption and implementation remain great.

Read more here: http://www.ahdionline.org/scriptcontent/Downloads/White_Paper-Medical_Transcription-Proven_Accelerator_of_EHR_Adoption.pdf

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.

Advocacy Summit Orientation & Training

Prepare for the Advocacy Summit and/or learn more about the advocacy process by attending two complimentary webinars hosted by AHDI:

Preparing for the Advocacy Summit
What You Need to Know about the HITECH Act
Tuesday, April 14, 4:00-5:00 p.m. EST
Click here to register.

Preparing for the Advocacy Summit
What You Need to Know about Lobbying
Thursday, April 30, 4:00-5:00 p.m. EST
Click here to register.