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.

Happy Arbor Day!

Don't forget to join AHDI today in our year-long initiative to support the Arbor Day Foundation as part of our new commitment to "go green" as an environmentally responsible organization. Get out and plant a tree. Join the Foundation. Make a difference.

Trees - Arbor Day Foundation
Source: www.arborday.org
This official site of the Arbor Day Foundation provides information about planting and caring for trees, our Rain Forest Rescue and Tree City USA programs, and much more. Buy trees and give a gift of trees through our Trees in Memory and Trees for America programs.