Don’t you just love that word?? It’s one of those words that sends chills down my spine. As a kid, I could not believe it took 12 months for Christmas to come again. Not to mention my birthday…well, back in those days I looked forward to birthdays. You want to know what I’m looking forward to now? Austin…the Music Capitol of the South! And the city will be even more special because lots of my friends and colleagues will be there. Some of them I’m meeting for the first time. The Annual Conference and Exposition (ACE) is a great place to meet up with people I work with and IM on a daily basis. Of course, I also get to see a lot of my long-time friends.

Not to mention, all the great lectures that are on the schedule for this year. The exhibit hall. The networking. All-in-all, I find ACE to be almost as rewarding as Christmas! Over the years, I’ve had the opportunity to attend a lot of annual meetings. Each one seems to take on a character of its own. Sometimes I think I know how a meeting will be…only to arrive and find out the latest buzz and voila! The meeting totally changes. This will be the first ACE since the change went into effect last year that makes this meeting the beginning of our committee/Task Force structure. That’s different. It’s the first time the officers will change place actually at this meeting. It’s our first time in Austin.

And this year AHDI has added a Leadership Summit. I can’t tell you how excited I am about this. I have truly missed the opportunity to have face to face time with other component leaders to discuss issues, challenges and share successes.

I hope you all are getting ready to attend this year as well. It’s going to be an awesome meeting!

Today, I dragged myself out of bed early to attend a webinar presented by AHDI’s Blueprint for Great Governance Task Force. And boy was I glad I did!

As many of you know, I’ve been around AAMT/AHDI for several years. Before we had state or state/regional associations, before we had a House of Delegates, before we had a credentialing exam….and over the years it’s been so exciting and fun to watch and participate in the growth and development of our association. Well, I’m here to tell you, the fun and excitement are back!

This task force is discussing ways to streamline our component structure, bring all component leaders together to share ideas and work more effectively, and decrease time spent on administrative functions at the component level (separate bylaws, policies and procedures, newsletters, websites, and tracking financial reports) by providing staff support…think about it, STAFF! This change would allow our volunteers to focus on the things we are passionate about: Working with students, promoting a credentialed workforce, advocacy, networking…the list is endless. So, the volunteers can drive the bus and the staff can make sure there is gas in the tank, get the tire pressure checked, and make sure we have a good map to follow to our destination.  This is the one of the most dynamic changes I’ve seen our association make in a long time and will be in Austin to see the outcome.

Our House of Delegates will be considering these ideas and voting on whether or not to move forward with these in August. AHDI-West has 3 delegates representing you at the House of Delegates meeting in Austin.

What can you do? Be informed and be part of any changes.  There are two more Town Hall Meeting webinars scheduled before then (6/14 and 7/14), and we encourage you to attend one of them.  Send any comments to Info@ahdi-west.org.

As our world turns more digital and technology oriented, it was great to see so many people show up for a face-to-face meeting. In fact, it was a confirmation that we need to find ways to continue to make these meetings happen. The other surprise for me was on the evaluations. We had one medical speaker. I expected to hear about that. Instead, we got rave reviews on providing information to our members about what is coming down the pipeline and how to be ready for it. What a difference from a few years ago when attendees insisted on mostly medical credits. We are definitely growing in our awareness of how the outside entities affect our lives and our jobs.

On Saturday we were at Gateway Community College and it was awesome! We used the computer lab to demonstrate a number of products, services, and technologies including the Benchmark KB. An investment in this product actually increases your production and quality while supporting our association…does it get any better? In the main auditorium we had speakers sharing about career pathways and EHRs.

I have to say this is one of the most exciting and upbeat meetings I’ve attended in a long time. Thank you all for coming and sharing time with us. I hope to see you all again in Austin for the AHDI No Limits Conference!

Over and over Laura, my trainer, tells me, you have to be consistent in what you tell him and how you do it. And you have to be persistent in giving the command and making sure he obeys it. Do not ever give a command and then not follow through. These are tough lessons for a softie like me. But we are making progress.

I think the same holds true for AHDI and AHDI-West. It’s hard work to be consistent when not everyone agrees on everything. But don’t we all agree on the basics: We want to have jobs in this evolving healthcare documentation world. We want to continue to produce or edit healthcare documents that accurately reflect what transpired. We want to do this in a timely manner. We want to continue to advocate on behalf of the patient and the patient’s family so that what is in those exceptionally important documents is accurate and communicates clearly and consistently the information the healthcare provider deemed important.

Is that happening now? In some places, yes. But as our economy has taken a dive and everyone is cutting costs, one of the “obvious” places to cut is proofreading, quality assurance and, yes, even asking the MLS to spend less time researching terms and just “get the work out the door”. Does that ultimately serve the patient’s best interest? Or the healthcare providers who are trying to take care of them? Or even, ultimately, the facility that has adopted this approach? I don’t think so. Sooner or later, the buck will stop and the lawsuits will start. Probably there are some already underway.

So what? So, now is the time for us to be persistent in our message that quality counts, that patients have a right to an accurate record and to tell the nation that in many cases that is not happening because no one is proofreading the data that is input into the record….because proofreading costs time and time is money. Now is the time for us to be persistent in our efforts to share our intimate knowledge of this documentation process with our legislative representatives, those who participate in the regulatory process, and with the public. Now is the time to speak up and speak out – on the forums for major newspapers, on the blogs of major news organizations, everyplace and anyplace you can make your voice heard.

AHDI-West has committed to send representatives to AHDI’s Advocacy Summit again this year to participate in this critical process. We continue to be consistent and persistent on behalf of our members.

Each step of the way we struggled with how to pay for this growth. It wasn’t easy to find the money to hire staff and consultants. But as we began to use staff and brought in marketing and membership consultants, we found that we actually began to grow. We found that there was actually a huge pay-off in having staff who were dedicated to getting the job done. We made a lot of progress.

We freed our volunteer leaders up to meet with members, to focus on guiding the association into the next step of growth and development. We asked them to take on the challenges of thinking about the future, developing a blueprint for our role in the evolving world of electronic healthcare delivery, and creating career ladders that utilize our specific knowledge and skill base.

Now AHDI-West is at the same point. For years our association has asked volunteers to give of their time, their money, their creativity, their talent to grow the association. And they have repeatedly stepped up to do just that. But we all know that volunteers fit their volunteer activities in around their work, their family, and the curves life throws them. As our association evolves and more regional associations and state associations are formed, we are finding that we are all beginning to have webinars. Each state or regional association is required to fund their delegates to the AHDI annual meeting to attend the House of Delegates. For us, that’s 3 delegates we need to get to Austin this year. We are all encouraged to get our legislative liasions to Washington DC for AHDI’s Advocacy Summit…and anyone else we can get there to participate in this important event. We are each also trying to do at least one big meeting and several smaller ones to meet the needs of our constituency. Because we are a Corporation, we pay an accountant to do our taxes; this will cost approximately $1500.

All of these are important events and we need to support them. But the question becomes, how do we pay for all of this? We need to find more ways to create income. At our last board meeting, we had a long and intense discussion about how to do this. There are a lot of ways to increase income but they all require making this effort a priority. We need consistent and dedicated effort. But volunteers have other demands on their time that take precedence. So, the board has begun discussing how to afford to hire someone part-time who can focus on marketing and advertising for us. We are exploring some affiliate programs with Amazon and some other partners that might help us. We are also asking our members to make our website their home page. Advertisers want to see how much traffic our site gets, so we need your help. There are comment sections on a lot of the things on our website. Please, please take the time to fill them out. It moves us up the ladder on Google and Yahoo Searches. We have now linked our website to our Facebook and Twitter pages – we need you to visit them, comment on them, and link us to your friends and family…

We all know the mess healthcare delivery is in in this country. No matter how you feel about the current bills in the Senate and House, we KNOW we can make positive changes that impact patient care in a good way and reduce costs. We know the mistakes that are being made by the use of front-end speech recognition systems and templates. We need you to share those stories on our sites. We need to reach the rest of the country with our perspective so we can continue to be heard and changes can be made that protect the patient – our mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, children, spouses, friends, and everyone else!

Not everyone can commit the time to be on the board for 2 years, or to chair a focus group. But we can all spare a few minutes to visit the website and share some of our stories with the rest of the country. Let’s help our leaders make good decisions!

Thanks to everyone who visits, becomes a fan on Facebook or sends a tweet our way!

We’ve all been glued to our televisions this past 2 weeks, watching the disaster in Haiti unfold. It’s been incredible to watch the devastation, the rush to help the survivors, the incredible spirit of the Haitian people. I watched one woman who was buried alive and stuck for 36 hours before they got her out. Her husband waited the whole time, believing she was alive and focusing efforts to get her out. And when she was finally evacuated from the building, she sang a song of thankfulness.

Then I watched Anderson Cooper as he did some interviews and talked to a young man who was buried alive, who lost his mother and father, and was when he was rescued he was dehydrated and weak. Two days later he was smiling and when Anderson asked him how he was, he said “I’m fine.”

I am astounded and amazed at the spirit these people are demonstrating in the face of this overwhelming adversity. And I have to confess, I am humbled by this demonstration of accepting life in all its manifestations. I too often sit around and whine about the circumstances I find myself in – and believe me, they are NOTHING compared to what these people are experiencing. Earlier this week I lost power for 3 hours…3 hours and I was ready to move to mom’s. I had food and shelter, I was safe, it wasn’t that cold, it was daylight so I could see. I certainly was not singing a song of thankfulness.

Too often I find myself whining about things in my life, my job, my association. But as I’ve watched the grace and courage of these people manifest itself throughout this whole disaster, I’ve come to the conclusion that I need to quit whining. If something isn’t as good as I think it could be or should be, then I just need to find a way to make it better. For me, for my family, for my co-workers and for my association.

Will I really quit whining? Probably not. But I will definitely get up each day and sing a song of thankfulness that I’m alive, that I have a job, that my family is intact, and that my association continues to identify a way for us to have a future in this evolving healthcare world.

For all of this I’m thankful.

As I’ve been thinking about dad this last month or so, I also have to be thankful for his curiosity and his willingness to learn new things. At the ripe old age of 75, my dad purchased a laptop. He’d go online and look at the stock market prices, check out the results from the bridge club, and look for other things of interest. He always read the paper and kept up with current events. And continued to play bridge every week.

What a great legacy for your children. Never quit learning, never quit striving to be the best, never quit being fully involved and engaged in life!

As I look forward to 2010 for AHDI-West, I take those lessons with me. We’ve recently engaged an inbound marketing consultant to help us develop our marketing via the internet, Twitter, Facebook and other outlets. There are over 16,000 people on Facebook who mention the words medical transcription in their profiles….our goal is to reach all of them…and all of their friends!

We have hired a bookkeeper to help us with our finances, pay the bills, give us statistics on registrations for webinars, what subjects are the best attended, and are preparing to work with an accounting firm going forward to manage our taxes and corporate financial questions. We hope to begin to explore with AHDI ways to “share staff” for meaningful project development and implementation. Going forward our association needs to become less competitive (i.e., everyone competing for attendees for webinars, meetings, advertising, exhibitors) and start collaborating to accomplish common goals. And we need to continue to explore ways to work smarter and use our finances to help us accomplish our initiatives.

Our members play a huge part in this new approach to association governance. As we have set up the focus groups, we are finding people getting excited about being able to participate without spending all day at a board meeting. They are excited about being able to jump on the computer and contribute, either by joining the discussion, forwarding emails to congressional representatives and regulatory agencies, attending one of our Power of 10 webinars that support AHDI’s lobbying initiatives, and the numerous other opportunities.

We are having successful smaller meetings throughout our region and working on more for 2010. We also have our annual meeting coming up in Phoenix, AZ, April 16-17, 2010, with Advocacy Day Arizona on April 15, 2010. The theme for this meeting is “Phoenix Rising”….and I am so excited about this concept! I hope you will all put it on your calendar now to join us. We will be partnering with AHDI to host one of the Town Hall Meetings that look at what our members want and how we can participate in crafting it.

We are sending representatives to AHDI Advocacy Summit again this year and while there we will participate in the Town Hall Meeting for discussions about what our association will look like in this evolving world of Electronic Healthcare Documentation. As healthcare has moved to center stage in our nation, it has provided us with a huge opportunity to secure our future and ensure the success of our members in this new work environment.

Thank you dad for teaching me to look at the big picture, to not fear new things but to embrace them, to have a desire to stay involved and to have a voice in my own future!

Perception shapes our lives and our association. As AHDI-West comes to the end of its first year, I thought I’d take a little time and share some of our highlights and challenges with everyone. It has been one of the most exciting times in my association career to become part of this Board of Governors and begin to shape our destiny. We have developed a structure that emphasizes accomplishing our goals, big and little, long-term and short-term, and while it pays respect to the rules of governance, governance is not our major focus. It has freed up the board members and our volunteers to concentrate on getting established as innovators, goal-oriented focus groups, and has allowed us to accomplish so much in this short period of time.

We had our first regional conference in March 2009 in Sacramento, California. At that meeting we were the first group to do a workshop and simultaneously webcast it. It was a smashing success! We launched our first Advocacy Day in Sacramento – and as a result, two members who had not participated in this arena before got so excited that they agreed to co-chair our focus group on Advocacy. COPPs (Council of Past Presidents) sponsored them to AHDI’s Advocacy Summit 2009 and they are now well on their way to organizing Advocacy Day 2010 in Phoenix, Arizona.

In March we also had a huge response to the Education/Credentialing focus group. Amy Harper, CMT, the chair of that group, swiftly put together a study group and entered us in the AHDI Credentialing Cup. Due to her efforts we have 6 new CMTs/RMTs. Now one of her successful candidates, Robin Mock, CMT, is running our current study group. Many study groups cost hundreds of dollars, but ours are $15 and that affords our members the opportunity to take this online webinar and successfully attain their credential….which moves our industry forward. We are the only allied healthcare profession that does not require licensure or certification. We pay a price for that in wages, compensation, and recognition. We are the only ones who can change that…and we are, one successfully credentialed candidate at a time!

Every association has its ups and downs, just like in our lives. Sadly, our Director of Communication/Delegate and our Secretary/Delegate had to resign for personal reasons. A short time later, our Director of Finance also resigned. It is always hard because it makes members think things are not working as they should. But we all know that there are periods in our lives when we can do extra things and then, unfortunately, sometimes events interfere with our ability to continue down that road. The current Board of Governors has elected another member to our board to replace our Secretary/Delegate position. I am absolutely delighted to let you know that Terri Wakefield, CMT, has been elected to fulfill the one-year term of office remaining in this position, beginning January 1, 2010. Terri has an extensive history with AHDI (formerly AAMT). She was formerly on staff with AAMT and developed our certification program and assisted in the development of our educational materials. After leaving her staff position, Terri served on the AAMT Board of Directors. She currently resides in Arizona and we hope you will make her feel welcome!

We also have had the opportunity to participate in a series of smaller meetings in Oregon and Arizona that have connected with our members in those areas. We continue to support AHDI’s advocacy efforts by sponsoring the Power of 10 webinars where the proceeds go directly to AHDI to help pay for our DC-based lobbying firm, the Dewey Square Group. This has been one of the most exciting events and opportunities we have had the pleasure of participating in!

We are currently planning our 2nd AHDI-West Annual Conference & Advocacy Day  to take place in Phoenix, Arizona, April 15, 2010 (Advocacy Day), and the conference will be April 16-17, 2010. More details of this will be available on our website as soon as the contacts are signed. So mark your calendars for this event

We are exploring some new and interesting opportunities to increase our visibility in the healthcare domain and beyond. I am so impressed that this board is willing to keep an open mind and go where no one else has gone before! Our desire is to serve our members and our profession in meaningful ways. Stay tuned for news of upcoming events and opportunities for those of you who wish to get involved in the focus groups. The beauty of the focus group concept is that you can be involved as much or as little as you like, work it in around your schedule, and still contribute to the success of our regional association.

Thanks to all of you who have jumped on board already…and to those of you who will in the days to come

Have a safe and joyous Christmas everyone! See you in Arizona!