AHDI is issuing a fun “challenge” to all Facebook members and AHDI Facebook fans. Donate $10 to the Power of 10 campaign through our Facebook Cause: Support the AHDI Power of 10 Campaign. By donating to our Facebook cause, you could be the lucky winner of an AHDI educational CD! For every 10th donation of $10, AHDI will give away a great credit-worthy product, so log in to Facebook, become a fan of our Power of 10 cause, and donate your $10 today. Note: This challenge applies only to donations received through Facebook and not to donations received through other avenues. Promotionals and challenges to other member groups will be forthcoming. Challenge runs from 9/10 to 10/10 of 2009.

AHDI is proud to announce these newly elected directors, who will serve from 2010-2012:

Sherry Doggett
Brett McCutcheon, CMT, AHDI-F
Lisa Johnson Williams, CMT, AHDI-F

We are also happy to announce the Speaker-elect for the House of Delegates for 2009:

Chad Sines, AHDI-F

Thank you, elected leaders and candidates, for your commitment to excellence and support of the Association through advocacy, standards-setting, and education. Thank you, AHDI members, who took the time to cast your votes and help to shape the future of the association and industry. On behalf of AHDI members, board of directors and staff, we congratulate you!

Each year ADVANCE for HIM conducts a salary survey of targeted HIM professionals, including medical tanscriptionists and editors. AHDI encourages all members and industry colleagues to participate in the survey to help provide all stakeholders in our sector with credible data on compensation, wages, and work settings. The survey seeks information about salary, work setting (on site vs at home), job specialty, education, and benefits. To take the ADVANCE Salary Survey today.

We’re ready! Are you?

“Power of 10” Technology Webinars

As most of you know, AHDI has launched a year-long campaign to raise a minimum of $100,000 ($10 from 10,000 MTs) by the end of 2010. This is an effort to support our association’s advocacy efforts in Washington, DC. AHDI has hired a lobbying firm, who is working to ensure our sector is well represented in the healthcare reform criteria, standards for EHR systems, and workforce development in allied health. There is definitely power in numbers.

On behalf of ALL AHDI components, AHDI-West will host a technology webinar once a month, beginning in September 2009 and extending through December 2010 (total of 16 sessions). Each webinar will be focused on various aspects of technology in our industry, featuring a variety of vendors who will provide an education overview. The webinars will be 1.5 hours in length, including 60 minutes of education/instruction and 30 minutes of Q&A, qualify for AHDI-approved CEC opportunities for registrants (either MT Tools or Technology & Workplace). The fee for each of the 16 webinars will be $10 (for all registrants). All sessions will be recorded (with the permission of the presenters) and available for download if members are not able to attend the live presentation. Each download will also cost $10 for All proceeds will be sent to AHDI earmarked for the AHDI Power of 10 campaign.

The first Power of 10 Technology webinar will be Wednesday, September 23, 2009, 2:00-3:30 PM PST.

Topic: The Health Story Project
Presenter: Laura Bryan, CMT, AHDI-F, AHDI 2009 Advocate of the Year & AHDI representative on the HSP since January 2007.
AHDI CEC Approval: 1.5 TW (Technology & Workplace) credits

We are capturing where attendees heard about the webinars and which components they belong to. Every month we will celebrate who has brought in the most attendees per webinar. Spread the word to EVERYONE who has ANYTHING to do with healthcare documentation. This is a great opportunity to follow up with your legislators or introduce yourself to more of them, and invite them to this webinar.
Go to www.AHDI-West.org to register for the webinars.

Spread the news!! Promote this to your members and “future” AHDI or MTIA members.

AHDI is proud to announce the launch of its new blog, the AHDI Lounge.In addition to our News & Information Blog, AHDI has created a new exchange blog for members and industry colleagues to blog and discuss issues, trends, and challenges facing both the industry and the association.The AHDI executive staff, board of directors, and HOD Speaker will be blogging in the Lounge with the hope of engaging members in thoughtful dialogue and information exchange. We will also feature guest bloggers, including blogging AHDI members who wish to participate. News feeds, Flickr photo streams, and AHDI videos will be prominently featured on our new blog. The AHDI Lounge has a bold, dynamic look and feel. We know you’re going to love it. So pull up a chair, hang out with us in the Lounge, and let’s talk about how we can work together to position our workforce for the future! Find The Lounge at www.ahdilounge.blogspot.com.

Attendees at ACE 2009 were the first to hear about AHDI’s new Power of 10, a year-long campaign to raise $10 from 10,000 MTs by 2010. Why? To support the association’s advocacy efforts in Washington, DC, where AHDI and MTIA are working hard to make sure all healthcare documentation professionals have a role in the future of the EHR. Our lobbying firm, along with our government relations staff, is making sure our sector is well represented in important meetings and discussions being held by our nation’s legislators and policymakers on healthcare reform, criteria and standards for EHR systems, and workforce development in allied health. All Power of 10 funds go directly to this effort. Thank you to all in attendance who stepped up to be the first to contribute to this important initiative—helping us raise nearly $2000 toward this goal. If you did not get a chance to contribute, you can donate to the Power of 10 campaign online or by mail. Make sure your funds are clearly marked for this campaign, and as a reminder, donations to this campaign are not tax deductable as charitable contributions.

If you weren’t able to attend AHDI’s 31st Annual Convention and Exposition in Nashville last week, you missed out on a powerful event packed with relevant educational sessions, dynamic keynote speakers, and valuable networking events. This year the dialogue and exchange around EHR adoption, “meaningful use,” the Health Story Project, the need to preserve physician narrative in the future of health data capture, and the importance of promoting the role of the knowledge worker in quality assurance—all provided attendees and exhibitors with a critical opportunity to stay in the stream of important information. Here is just a peek at some of the key messages and events you missed:

• Event: Launch of the Power of 10 Campaign
• Message: Medical Transcription is a proven accelerator for EHR adoption and is a “shovel ready” solution to healthcare providers having trouble purchasing expensive EHR systems
• Message: The Dictation/Transcription process is a preferred method for physicians documenting the healthcare encounter
• Message: Medical transcription is a “green” job and this technology-enabled knowledge workforce is capable of assisting with the migration to greater EHR adoption
• Event: Dr. Jonathan Perlin, Chair of the HIT Standards Committee, in a meeting with members of the AHDI and MTIA Board of Directors, declaring value in the AHDI and MTIA promoting uniformly structured and coded narrative reports to better describe the healthcare encounter (Health Story Project)
• Event: AHDI leaders sharing successful best practices in promoting credentialing, education approval, alliance building, career fairs, and membership development.
• Message: AHDI’s work with the Dewey Square Group (DSG), a lobbying firm based in Washington, DC, has improved AHDI’s access to key government decision-makers and made the organization’s advocacy efforts more impactful. Since beginning its work with DSG, AHDI has been able to secure a meeting with the Senior Advisor to the National Coordinator for Health IT. In addition, the important Health IT Policy Committee recently cited dictation-transcription as a specific function that could be included in EHR certification criteria.
• Message: CCHIT, the approval body for EHR systems, does not require narrative dictation as an option for data entry. Discussion around this reality lead to agreement around promoting The Health Story Project as well as other specific actions to take through our advocacy efforts.

AHDI held its first annual Integrity Awards last week at the 31st Annual Convention & Expo (ACE) in Nashville, Tennessee. The association revamped its awards program in 2009, choosing to focus on contributions made by individuals and corporations that better align with the association’s focus on integrity. Winners of this year’s awards were honored at a red carpet awards show event on Saturday night, and each truly represents the kind of innovative thinking and best practices the association hopes to showcase for the sector. Congratulations to all of the following Integrity Awards winners:

• Excellence in Credentialing Award—Tammy Moore, CMT, AHDI-F
• Advocate of the Year—Laura Bryan, CMT, AHDI-F
• Rising Star (Student Essay Contest) Award—Kim Boyce
• Innovation Through Technology Award—Scott Faulkner, InterFix
• Membership Impact Award—Pennsylvania Association for Healthcare Documentation Integrity
• Employer of the Year—Amphion Medical Solutions
• Member of the Year—Dianna Hall, CMT, AHDI-F
• Lifetime Achievement Award—Bob Harvey, TRS/TRS Institute
• Distinguished Service Award—Scott Edelstein, JD, Squire, Sanders & Dempsey

AHDI recently transitioned to a new association management system (AMS) – Personify, and launched our newly integrated website. As with all major platform transitions, we have experienced many expected and unexpected errors/incompatibilities that we are working hard to correct. Many of you have already contacted us to alert us to errors and pages that cannot be accessed. We greatly appreciate this feedback as it serves to assist us in reaching a more efficient process sooner. Please be advised of the following problems we are currently working to resolve:

• Delivery of membership packets for new and renewing members is delayed. – Please be patient; your packet my take longer to reach you over the next couple of weeks as these will be processed in batches in the order they were received.
• Membership cards are currently not available. – Please wait until this area of the website is restored to access and print your card.
• CMT certificates cannot be downloaded at this time. – New CMTs will receive their certificates by mail. CMTs whose employers need verification of credentialing should contact the AHDI office.
• Professional Practices Network (PPN) is currently offline and not available. – Send professional practice questions to kwall@ahdionline.org.
• The discount link to Stedman’s products in the Member’s Only area is currently not available.
• None of the online directories – members, components, etc. – are currently available. Contact the AHDI office to verify membership or locate a component.

Thank you for your patience and cooperation as we work through these technical issues with the goal of delivering you the most dynamic member experience we can. We will keep you informed as we make corrections and updates to the website. In the meantime, please contact our Member Services Department at 1-800-982-2182 or by email at ahdi@ahdionline.org if you have any questions or concerns.

The Student Alliance has recently lost their website (ahdisa.org) but is ready to start anew with a Member’s Only Facebook group! As a member of AHDI you can join this group FREE of charge to access the same great benefits you had on the SA site- the Topic of the Week email, newsletter, and vital links to valuable MT resources! This page can also be used as a forum where you can interact with like-minded people to maximize your networking potential!

Join the AHDI Student Alliance Members Only Facebook Group today!