So much of the Association for Healthcare Documentation Intregrity's (AHDI's) messaging and industry advocacy has been centered on the critical need for this sector to embrace professional credentialing--why it's important not only to the individual, but also to the value proposition we are making to health care about the role our work force does and can continue to play in health data capture. Certainly, to a health care system that places a high value on allied health credentials and scope of practice standards, medical transcription has been an invisible contributor to the landscape. Many fear we will continue to be overlooked and undervalued by our end-users until we are willing and able to "hang" with everyone else in allied health when it comes to training and credentials. AHDI has and will continue to beat that drum to anyone who will listen, especially to MT employers, who are beginning to pull alongside that vision and collaborate with us toward a marketplace requirement for credentials.
But what we don't spend enough time discussing is what happens after the certified medical transcriptionist (CMT) exam--what our ongoing objectives are for recredentialing. Most are probably vaguely aware that a CMT is required to earn continuing education credits (CECs) to maintain that status, but to what end? What is and/or should be the objective of an association recredentialing program? Is it just a matter of collecting credits in random content areas, or is there a goal behind that effort?
For AHDI and its credentialing development team (CDT), unpacking that question and ensuring that our CEC assignments and approvals align with our professional development objectives will be an important goal for 2010. In years past, when credit-worthy resources were harder to come by and most CECs were earned at component meetings, the association leaned toward less restrictive guidelines around approvals in an effort to make sure MTs could truly meet those recredentialing goals. These days, however, with ready access to credit-worthy material both online and on television, MTs have plenty of opportunities to meet the recredentialing criteria. Tightening the reins around our recredentialing criteria could not be better timed.
CMTs currently have to earn 30 continuing education credits (CECs) over a 3-year cycle to maintain their credentialed status. At least 24 of those credits must be earned as follows:
8 CECs: Clinical Medicine (CM)
Traditional medical areas and specialties, human anatomy and physiology, surgery, acupuncture, chiropractic, pharmacology, laboratory medicine, imaging, disease processes, medical research and development, and allied health areas (physical therapy, podiatry, audiology, occupational therapy, rehabilitation, psychology).
4 CECs: Medical Transcription Tools (MTT)
English language usage, MT resources and references, professional practice, applied standards (style, formatting, quality assurance (QA) metrics, proofreading, editing, etc.), developing a QA or quality improvement program, QA techniques and procedures, and document processing tools (word processing, abbreviation expanders).
6 CECs: Technology and the Workplace (TW)
MT-related technology (all facets, including ASPs, FTP, encryption, etc.), electronic health records (EHRs), personal health records, trends in health care delivery, coding and reimbursement, data tagging, data mining, database management, ergonomics, workplace design, business issues related to medical transcription, and technical security issues.
6 CECs: Medicolegal Issues (ML)
Management of health care and other records, risk management, medicolegal terminology and concepts, accreditation, administrative standards, ethics, confidentiality, health care-related legislation, HIPAA, standards development (ASTM, HL7, etc.).
The remaining six (or more) CECs can be earned in any of the above areas or in the optional areas of Complementary Medicine or Professional Development, with guidelines for qualifying content in each of those areas. Within the descriptions for each of the core and optional areas, there has often existed a rather gray area of interpretation as to the credit-worthiness of a given topic, article or presentation. It is the goal of the 2010 CDT to take a more granular look at these descriptions and tighten the requirements for approval in a way that ensures compliance with our vision and objectives for continuing education.
What are AHDI's objectives for continuing education?
Credentialing bodies and professional associations, including the American Society for Association Executives, are actively engaged in a new dialogue around recredentialing programs, and most experts in this domain are urging associations to take a fresh look at recredentialing policies and consider the fundamental question: Are your recredentialing policies advancing the professional development objectives of your organization?
For AHDI, this is a critical question, as arguably no other work force in America is in greater need of "professional development objectives" than ours. With commoditization of traditional transcription changing the landscape of our services, emerging technologies like EHR and speech recognition technology systems reshaping the application of our tacit knowledge, and new roles in health care documentation forcing us to broaden our definition of a "documentation specialist," we need a recredentialing program that makes sure our CMTs are advancing successfully through and with these changes. This will mean changing some of our recredentialing policies in 2010, primarily making sure we are not assigning CECs to products, events, topics and articles that do not move a CMT forward. CECs assigned to level 1 content may no longer be offered for CMTs because such a practice does not meet the goal of developing these professionals beyond the CMT.
Stay tuned in 2010 for more news and updates on our efforts to address these critical concerns. Your insights and feedback are always welcomed.
Lea Sims is director of professional programs at AHDI.
AHDI can continue to push the CMT credentials, but as long as they are not accredited and backed by AHIMA, it will never mean anything to employers.
Why has AHIMA ignored Medical Transcriptionists?
AHIMA supports the following credentials:
RHIA - Registered Health Information Administrator
RHIT - Registered Health Information Technician
CCA - Certified Coding Associate
CCS - Certified Coding Specialist
CCS-P- Certified Coding Specialist--Physician-based
CHDA - Certified Health Data Analyst
CHPS - Certified in Healthcare Privacy and Security
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