Pennsylvania

PA-AHDI has embarked upon four initiatives for 2009. Based on the feedback from our membership survey, credentialing and membership are the two most important items to our membership. This particular section of the web will provide a brief summary on each of our initiatives as well as an update on the progress in each of these areas. Our four initiatives include the following:

1. Credentialing: We wholeheartedly believe if we help our workforce become credentialed, whether the CMT and/or the RMT, we can help increase wages for the medical transcription industry. We also believe that a study on how the CMT and/or RMT improves quality and/or TAT for a hospital or an MTSO will help move this initiative forward in our industry and have an impact on the facilities to want to hire credentialed workers. PA-AHDI specifically has a credentialing committee with Deb Purse as our lead. If you are interested in a study group, please contact Deb at debpurse@comcast.net. We will also be sponsoring one person to become a CMT and RMT this year by filling out the credentialing form in our newsletter, so if you are not credentialed, please take advantage of this opportunity!! We want to be a part of moving credentialing forward in order to help our MTs with increased wages.  

2. Advocacy Day: We went to the Capitol on June 2^nd through 4^th of this year. This was an excellent time to “Speak our Voice” about the importance of medical transcription and the challenges we face. While this event occurred in June, it is still very important that we continue to contact our legislators about the importance of medical transcription, particularly with the HITECH act. Please contact Carol Croft, CMT at carolpa45@aol.com if you are interested in learning how to have more of an impact with your legislators.

3. Membership: We are heavily advocating to increase our presence in Pennsylvania. Did you know that Pennsylvania is one of the more heavily populated states for MTs? In the last year, we have slipped with our membership by 10%. If you know of a co-worker or a student who wants to become involved in networking and continual learning opportunities, please ask them to contact Kevena Espinoza at kespinoza@ac-pc.com.

We hope this section of the web will provide you an update on where we stand with each of our initiatives. If you are interested in becoming a volunteer to help us with the above initiatives, please contact me at patty.barrett@acusis.com or each of the committee chairs. Once again, we appreciate your feedback and support!

Sincerely,

Patty Barrett, CMT, AHDI-F

PA-AHDI President