Professional Development for Medical Transcription Student's Blog

Wednesday Transcription Tip- Help with Professional Acronyms

The list of acronyms for medical professionals is a bit mind boggling. There are a great many terms for licensing, certifications, and professional affilitations for medical service providers. Here is a nice little website to bookmark for times when you need to know what a medical professional acronym stands for.  This site is more for those providing care as is evidenced by the CMT being a designation for a Certified Massage Therapist versus a Certified Medical Transcriptionist.

Continuing Education Webinar- HIPAA and HITECH (Practicing MT)

Title: HIPAA and HITECH (Practicing MT)
When: Wed, Feb 22, 2012 3 PM - 4:30 PM PST
Presenter: Chad Sines, MS, MBA, AHDI-F
Length: 1 hour | Credits: 1.5 ML
Cost: $10

Making sense of the HIPAA and HITECH laws.  Pertinent information is translated by security and privacy officer from an MTSO and information is given to the MT participants in an easy to understand format.  

Join us!! 

My Medical Coding Bridge Journey- Week 2

Week 2 was enjoyable. The first two units are a bit of a review. One on anatomy and physiology and the other on medical records. These are the only two units that are not 100% all new material that an MT would not know. They definitely serve a strong purpose. Unit 1 ensures the student is ready with the prerequisites. Unit 2 reviews some things we know and adds material that many MTs do not know.

I think MTs are often deficient in their understanding of the lifecycle of healthcare documentation. We only see what comes up on our screen; therefore, most honestly have no clue what happens to the medical record before or after it leaves their screen. We have no idea how medical coding is used. We have no idea how medical billing works. We really have no idea just how complicated it is for facilities to ensure privacy is maintained while ensuring that those who have a legitimate need for access can get that access.

This unit also dealt with some of the differences between facility and physician office records. A physician normally sees a patient on an “as-needed” basis which are handled through progress notes, mainly. There are some minor procedures, but nothing that in-depth record wise. With hospital records, patients are often seen on an in-patient status. The records get much more complicated. The Joint Commission standards apply to these in-patient facilities. I did not realize that the physician’s office was not accountable to the Joint Commission, so that was a new one for me.

While the medical codes that are added are used for reimbursement, they are also used for statistical purposes. If an ER has enough calls for an orthopedic surgeon, the hospital will consider maintaining one on-call permanently. This is done by analyzing the codes in the patient record. The same can be used to remove services that are not cost effective. On a grander scale, the Department of Health and Human Services can track the number of cases (again identified by medical codes) of STDs, other infectious diseases, gun shots, rapes, etc, and determine where and how to focus their efforts.

This unit went pretty quick having had experience with HIM in the past. I am loving this program. Lots of things to learn. Got another 100. Woohoo.

On to Section Three. You really should consider this program!!

Continuing Education Webinar- Risk Management

Continuing Education Webinar- Imaging Studies, Part 1

Title: Imaging Studies, Part 1
When: Fri, Feb 17 2012 12 PM - 1 PM PST
Presenter: Diane Gilmore, CMT, AHDI-F
Length: 1 hour | Credits: 1 CM
Cost: $10

Diagnostic imaging tests confirm the presence of a disease when there is already suspicion or evidence of an illness, to determine the extent of disease and monitor how well a patient responds to treatment. Today tests, covering supercomputer-like power and high-end nuclear medicine systems, are a part of nearly every report transcribed by a medical transcriptionist. This webinar will review some of the traditional as well as latest imaging terminology as well as the latest advances and methods used by radiologists, including various types of radiologic imaging as well as nuclear and interventional radiology covering several medical specialties, used by radiologists to diagnose and treat medical disorders.

Join us!! 

Monday Technology Tip- Be Prepared for Armageddon

Today’s tip is based on my experience last Monday. You must be prepared when Armageddon hits, and believe me it will hit you at the worst possible time when you are least prepared. I rebooted my laptop at the office and up popped a Startup Repair screen…interesting.. rebooted.. same thing. No hard drive found. No Windows Long story short, somehow my boot sector record was corrupted. It was not a virus, malware, or anything like that. It was just some out of the blue something. It took close to 6 hours off and on to fix it. Once I could mount the drive a check disk repaired the damage. All was right in the world again.

Always have a boot disk. Your windows will make one for you. You must have at least one of these or you will be in big trouble. You can use your Windows installation CD. Make one anyway as a backup. Learn how (click the operating system that you have): Windows 7, Vista.  If you are like me and did not have your recovery disk made, you can use someone else’s computer to make one or buy a download iso image to burn for about $10.

The scariest part is the loss of data. You can lose school files, all your personal pictures, videos, files, financial documents, etc.

You can buy an external hard drive for close to $100 and use backup software for it. This is a great idea except you must remember to regularly do it. I like to do this weekly and use a commercial software for automatic daily backups. I can get my data off an external drive much faster than the site and I can use the site to get what it missed in between backups.

I use Dropbox to backup all my work product and school work automatically. It is perfect for about 2 GB of data. It is not a backup service per se, but you can create folders that it will sync with the server and you can access elsewhere or share with those you choose.

I have not found any reliable backup service cheaper than Mozy. You are looking at about $6 a month for 5 GB of automatic backups. In my opinion, it is easily worth it. It does a decent job on set up of figuring out what to back up. You can customize this and choose to add additional files or folders.

The scary thing I realized is that I had accidentally turned off my commercial backup software. This was a ‘doh!” moment for me as I remember doing it when I was upgrading some things.

So the take away today is to be sure you have a recovery disc and/or a Windows installation disk. I now have one at the office and one at the house. Also be sure you have back up software running at all times. Unless of course, you do not care to ever see the data on your computer ever again.

And of course, tell your computer how much you love it every day. You just do not know when it might croak for good.

New Years Resolutions- Check In

We are about a month and a half into 2012 which makes me wonder how many of us have managed to stick to our new year’s resolutions. How many never made a single one? Most make lofty, unattainable resolutions. Still many of us made important ones that we could achieve if we stayed focused. These are goals we honestly desire to make a reality and the only thing holding us back is ourselves. Maybe we are looking to exercise regularly, lose some weight, attend more continuing education webinars, get our CMT, or learn new skills that will better position us in the workforce.

It is definitely not too late to re-affirm the positive resolutions we made. We should also consider tweaking any that were a little off the mark. Maybe going to the gym 6 days a week was too much, but 3 days is reasonable. It is also perfectly okay to ditch those which in hindsight serve no real need. I had written down that I wanted to learn Latin, but looking back I have no clue where that came from. Off the list it goes.

I think we need to have at least one goal that we can achieve this year for: personal growth, professional growth, health, family. You can have other resolutions in other categories but make a core set an absolute priority that you can and must do this year, no ifs ands or buts. They should be doable and, if possible, life altering. It is really easy to motivate yourself to do something which can change your life for the better.

If you are a near graduate, then the RMT is an excellent, achievable, and life-altering goal. Current MTs can decide to avoid the excuses and get their CMT. If you are an MT, then learning medical coding is a great one. This is one that I am doing myself and I am having a lot of fun with. We should all definitely be choosing more continuing education. Students are able to get a lot of these for free through Med-Line. Non-students can attend for a low $10 each.

So hopefully you have so ideas to help you tweak your previous resolutions or at least make some now. What are your core goals for 2012 that will change your life for the better? Are you going to re-commit to them and make them a reality?

My Medical Coding Bridge Journey- Week 1

I recently began Med-Line’s Medical Coding Bridge continuing education program. I thought it would be fun to chronicle my journey through the process and hopefully inspire some other MTs to step up to this fun challenge of broadening skill sets at a critical time in this EHR transition.

This first post is more about the why as this chapter was a review and orientation for what is to come. For those wondering if it will fit into their schedules, I am currently working full time and working on my Doctor in Business Administration full time. I am further ahead in the program than this post and to date have had no issues completing at least one chapter a week. The material flows well with what I know as an MT.

I decided to take Med-Line’s Medical Coding Bridge program because this has been a skill I have wanted to learn for a while. I am not planning to leave this industry. My reason for learning this skill set was to open up more opportunities at a time when medical coders are leading major changes that will affect us all. When I had looked into a medical coding program previously, the costs were prohibitive, required attending a brick & mortar program, or were just too long based on my current educational background. I have a vision of the future of healthcare documentation experts as people who transcribe, code, and bill reports. I will write more about that later, but suffice to say this is an area that has interested me a lot. 

Looking at the level of medical knowledge the medical coder and the medical transcription requires (based on model curriculums for both), the MT has a much more in depth medical knowledge skill set and the medical coder has more HIM training; however, many MTs learn this level of HIM as they are practicing. This was an 'aha' moment as you can see how an MT can easily put themselves into a position of knowing a coder's skills; however, the reverse will require extensive re-training. I smell an opportunity here.

The instructor gave me some excellent advice for the course. Do all the exercises whether you think you know the material or not. Skimming through the rest of the book I can see a lot of real medical record reports to code and lots of exercises for each chapter. 

The first chapter was a good review of some medical terminology and anatomy and physiology. It was well placed because it allows each MT to demonstrate that they have the basic prerequisites to begin the course. It also allows one to get a feel for the course, read over the syllabi, etc. The reading took about 30-45 minutes. The assignments took about an hour and the exam about another hour. I ended this chapter with a 100 for the test. It pays to double check all your answers. :) 

On to chapter two.

 

Chad Sines, MS, MBA, AHDI-F
Director of Admissions 

Continuing Education Webinar- Critical Thinking

Monday Technology Tip- Time Zones are Easy

Medical transcription is about critical thinking. It is about researching to find the answer so that you will be better equipped for the future. One of the saddest questions I hear is this: What time is it in my time zone? We had a tip on this in the past but there are still a lot of questions from students and practitioners on a regular basis.

In a virtual workforce, this is a question that we should never, ever hear. We work remotely, often for a company in another state and for clients in many others. Not knowing how to figure out basic time zones is a failure to think critically.

So we are going to put the issue to rest today.

The latest time is always Eastern Standard Time (EST), next is Central Standard Time (CST), then Mountain Standard Time (MST), and finally the earliest is Pacific Standard Time (PST).

It goes like this:

EST --> CST --> MST --> PST

Every time you move from left to right (the direction of the arrows), you subtract an hour. When going against the arrow, add an hour each time you cross an arrow.

So it would be 4 pm EST, 3 pm CST, 2 pm MST, 1 pm PST.

Pretty simple right?

So figure this one out and reply in the comments. What is 6 am CST in the other time zones?