AHDI Mountain States Region

It’s that time of year again and we have a great regional meeting planned! Mark your calendars to join us for this exciting event, full of great speakers, vendors, and networking!

The date is Saturday, June 8, and our meeting will be held in Colorado Springs, Colorado, at Memorial Administration Center, located at 2420 East Pikes Peak. You will find the agenda listed below.

The Days Inn Central at 2409 East Pikes Peak is right across the street from where we will be meeting. They offer room rates for AAA of only $89 per night. Reservations can be made by calling 719-471-0990.

Meeting Agenda

8:00 Registration
8:30 Welcome/Introductions
9:00 Speaker – Dr. Joseph Lee – Heart Disease in Women – 1 CM
10:00 Break
10:15 Speaker – DaVinci robot, Laura Hance – Medical Technology for Minimally Invasive Surgery – 1 CM
11:30 Business meeting and exhibit time
12:00 Lunch (Provided in early bird registration)
1:30 Speaker – Susan Lucci, RHIT – HIPAA TURNS 10: Birthday gifts could come with a big price tag – (CEC pending)
2:30 Break
3:00 Speaker – Karen Fox-Acosta, CMT, AHDI President – Project Your MT/HDS Skills into Tomorrow’s Marketplace Today – 1 PD
4:00 Wrap Up and Door Prize

For those who are interested, we will plan a “no-host” dinner Saturday evening for anyone who wants to join and and also get to know Karen a bit. Hope you will add that to your plans!

As you can see from our agenda, we are very excited to have this year’s AHDI President, Karen Fox-Acosta, coming to our meeting. This is a great opportunity for you to meet Karen and get to hear her vision for the future of our profession.

Members are asked to bring a door prize if you’d like. We will have lots of door prizes and great things for you to take home from this meeting!

Early Bird registration ends May 25, so don’t wait, sign up now! After May 25, registration prices will increase by 50%.

We are looking for a couple new members for our Board of Advisors to help us create the best Region we can have for our members.

We currently have Board Members in Colorado only, but our Region covers Montana, Wyoming, and New Mexico also. We would love to have a voice from these areas so that we can learn the specific needs for your state. For instance, do you need more Webinars because of the distance to travel anywhere? Do you want video chats with other MTs so that you can “meet” other people in your field? Join the Board of Advisors and help us to develop this into a Region that does what you need. Without your input, we cannot be who or what you want.

If you have an interest in joining the Mountain States Region Board of Advisors or would like more information, please email President Kathy Nicholls. We also have many positions open on our Focus Groups (Membership, Credentialing, Continuing Education) if you are more interested in those positions. With your help, this Region can grow to be one of the best in the Nation; without it, we won’t make it far. Please consider giving back to the Association and our Region.

President’s Message January 2013

Kathy Nicholls, CMT, AHDI-F

It seems 2013 has come upon me so quickly, I can hardly believe it’s here already. I am excited to serve as your president this year and look forward to a year of exciting opportunities.

Your board is working hard to serve you and I wanted to take a minute to share our focus groups and some ideas on how you can get involved in helping make AHDI-MSR a great region! While we do have a board of volunteers, it really does take more than that to make things successful. It takes input and involvement from all of our membership. I hope this will be the year you choose to become more involved. Remember that there are lots of “small” tasks so getting involved doesn’t mean you have to commit hours and hours to get things done. Here’s a list of the focus groups we will have this year:

Membership
This group works on our membership. Part of what they do is welcome new members, and yes we are gaining members! Mary Ann Warren does an excellent job of chairing this focus group and she’d love to have more participating in this one. This group is also always looking for ways to be sure that our members’ needs are being met.

Credentialing
Are you interested in promoting credentialing? We’re looking for people who are passionate about the value a credentialed healthcare documentation specialist brings to the table. Pat Friedell is this year’s chair, and she’d love to have you help out here!

Education
If you have ideas on topics for educational sessions, whether webinars or at our next regional meeting, this focus group needs your involvement! Beth Papia will be chairing this focus group and lead them in planning some excellent educational opportunities for 2013.

Other Opportunities
This year, we will have our first ever newsletter. Stay tuned for more details on that soon! Watch, too, as we work to increase our social media presence! If you haven’t already found us on Facebook, be sure you join us there! While you’re on our Facebook page, check out the picture posted from last year’s first ever regional meeting!

Remember that our board meetings are always open and we welcome your attendance. To register, simply click on the link at the top of this page. We meet every month on the second Saturday morning of the month. Hope to see you there!

2013 Officers

Elections were held at our December board meeting. Officers for this year are:
President: Kathy Nicholls
Vice President: Pat Friedell
Secretary: Beth Papia
Treasurer: Darla Wissehr

2013 Regional Meeting, Mark Your Calendars!

The date is set for our 2013 Regional meeting. It will be held on Saturday, June 8, 2013! Now we need your help. Please take a few quick minutes and fill out the survey below and help us pick the city as well as provide some input about what we can do to serve you in this new year. It won’t take much of your time and will be a great help in planning our year!

Let’s make 2013 a great year! I look forward to serving as your president and celebrating our success together!

District 2 Director, Bonnie Monico

We’re very excited to have Bonnie Monico, CMT, AHDI-F, our District Director presenting our webinar for December. Ever wondered if there isn’t an easier way to find those obscure terms you run across? Interested in hearing some of the latest terms out there? If the answer is yes, you won’t want to miss this one! Mark your calendars for Tuesday, January 22, at 4 p.m. Mountain Time, and join us for this exciting webinar.

Here’s Bonnie’s note and description for this presentation:

During this 1-hour presentation you will be brought up to speed on current terms which I have researched in the last 6 months. Some tricks on how you can find things faster as well as maybe newer drug terminology that you might not be familiar with depending upon whether you are working in a clinic setting or an acute care hospital setting. It does not matter, this hour is guaranteed to help you in some way make your work day and help the quality and integrity of your documents easier and as close to perfect as we can get them in our quest for perfection. As an added bonus…if we have time we will try and look at a few edited VR (voice rec) jobs as we all know that SR (speech rec) whatever you call it these days is here and we need to learn the tricks of the trade as one speech machine can be very different from another. Hope to see you at the webinar!

Registration is now open and it’s a deal at only $10. Preapproval is being sought from AHDI for CECs for this presentation. Hope you will join us!

AHDI-MSR is proud to announce our very first webinar in a series of educational sessions that we are planning. “Here, I Take My Stand” will be presented by Regina Holliday on Saturday, October 20, at 9 a.m. Mountain Time. If you missed Regina’s presentation as the keynote at the AHDI meeting in August, you sure won’t want to miss this one. Regina’s presentation was one of the most popular at the meeting.

2009 was an amazing year in HIT (Health Information Technology). That year HITECH (Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health) was passed and the debate began about the meaning of Meaningful Use. Lives were changed forever, as the health data community began debating the scope of access. For many this was just another series of new acronyms to learn. For the Holliday family in Metropolitan Washington, DC, timely data access was a matter of life or death.

This speech will focus on the benefits of patient/caregiver access to the EHR (Electronic Health Record), the great potential for catching errors in the medical record when multiple eyes combine with the tools of technology to focus on the record and the improvement seen in emotional and clinical health when open communication in relation to the EHR is established.

Regina Holliday is a DC-based patient advocate and artist. Regina began painting a series of murals depicting the need for clarity and transparency in medical records. This advocacy mission was inspired by her husband Frederick Allen Holliday II and his struggle to get appropriate care during 11 weeks of continuous hospitalization at 5 facilities. After his death from kidney cancer on June 17, 2009, she began painting a mural entitled “73 cents.” It depicts the Holliday family’s journey through the medical system. This painting became part of th4e national healthcare debate and was reported on in the mainstream press and peer reviewed journals such as the British Medical Journal (BMJ).

Regina also paints on canvas at medical conferences throughout the United States. She paints the concepts discussed within panels and during speeches presenting them as a visual representation of the patient’s view. She also began an advocacy movement called “The Walking Gallery.” The Gallery consists of a loose confederation of artists, medical providers, technicians and advocates who wear patient story paintings on the backs of their business suits. Regina is a 2011-2012 Fellow with Texas Medical Institute of Technology. She will appear in the upcoming Safety Leaders/Discovery Chanel documentary: “Out of the Danger Zone” and is part of the creative team working on The Patient Speakers Portal.

While you’re here, would you also take a minute and share this on your social media sites using the Sharebar on the left of this post? Thanks for helping to spread the word!

Seating is limited for this webinar and you will want to sign up now to assure you have a spot. Once you have paid your registration, be sure to also fill out the next page to register for your seat at this fantastic webinar. We’ll see you there!

In just a few weeks, we will have our first regional meeting for AHDI-Mountain States Region! I hope you have made plans to be there and be a part of this as it is shaping up to be a great meeting.

Our schedule is shaping up quite nicely. The speaker slots have been filled, and we will have sessions of interest to everyone. Mark your calendars now and be there on September 15! It is a time you won’t want to miss. So much of our lives is done online today, and it’s refreshing to be able to have some face-to-face networking time with our peers.

District Director to Attend!

District 2 Director, Bonnie Monico

We’re really fortunate this year to have our AHDI District Director, Bonnie Monico, coming to our meeting! You won’t want to miss Bonnie’s engaging presentation. She will also be able to update us about the exciting things that are going on at the national level.

Don’t delay any longer! Register today and we’ll see you there!

Mark your calendars! Based on our membership survey results, we have made plans for our first ever regional face-to-face meeting! September 15, 2012, we will gather in Colorado Springs, Colorado, and you don’t want to miss this event!

Details for the meeting are being finalized and registration forms will be posted soon. Still, let’s talk about the parts we do know!

Our meeting will be held September 15, 2012, at Memorial Hospital North, Pine Creek Room, in Colorado Springs, Colorado. I’ve been to meetings at this facility before and it’s a beautiful place for us to have a meeting. The tentative schedule looks like this:

8:00            Registration
8:25             Welcome
8:30             Speaker
9:30             Break
9:45             Speaker
10:45           Morning Break
11:00           Speaker
12:00          Lunch (included in early bird registration)
1:30             Speaker
2:30            Focus Group Roundtables
3:30            Afternoon Break
3:45            Speaker
4:45            Wrap Up and Door Prizes

Topics with confirmed speakers so far include zoonotic disease (by a veterinarian), breast cancer, and MTs and the Transition to Coding. We are also hoping for a presentation on radiation oncology, although that’s not confirmed yet. More information will come soon as we finalize the speakers.

Early bird registration can be done by signing up with this link! Mark your calendars and plan to join us. Reserve your seat today to be sure you get the early bird price! Note that after you register, you will be taken to a page to fill our your registration form. You must provide your AHDI membership number during registration to be eligible for the member rates. Be sure you do that as well!

Hotel Information

We have been able to secure a great rate for those who need a hotel room for the trip! Rooms will be available at the Hilton Garden Inn, 1810 Briargate Parkway, Colorado Springs, for a rate of only $89 per night, and that rate includes a made-to-order breakfast! In order to get this rate you must email Meagan Hines, and she will make the reservation for you. In your email, include your dates of arrival and departure. You can either include your credit card information to secure your room or ask her to call you for that information. Note that this email also sends a copy to Kathy Nicholls, meeting coordinator, so we can keep track of how many rooms we have reserved. Please note that you will not be able to get this rate by calling the hotel.

So mark your calendars, get registered and we’ll see you there! While you’re here, please also take a minute to use the share bar on the left to share the information about our meeting with your colleagues on your social media pages! Let’s spread the word and make this a great meeting.

National Medical Transcriptionist Week is just around the corner! It’s the one week where we celebrate our profession and all that we do.

In honor of this special week, AHDI-MSR has a gift for our members. We are offering a free webinar on Saturday, May 19, at 9 a.m. Mountain time to kick off our special week. “Rebranding the Profession” will be presented by Kathy Nicholls, CMT, AHDI-F. This one hour webinar will talk about our industry, how we got where we are, and where we are going. Let’s explore what we can do in these changing times to continue to hone our skills and be sure that we remain relevant in the healthcare industry. We hope you’ll join us for some great dialogue! This will be worth 1 CEC from AHDI in the Professional Development category.

Limited Seating!

Space for this webinar is limited to the first 100 registrants. Don’t miss your opportunity and get signed up today! Register for the webinar so you don’t miss the chance to be a part of our kick off celebration for MT week.

See you there!

One of the most important things we can do in our profession today is be sure we are staying up to date on our education. I think it’s so important, and I believe that continuing education will help a lot in surviving and thriving in the future. Every day there is news of something new in our world.

The Mountain States Regional Association of AHDI is committed to helping our members do just this by providing educational opportunities. This year, I am the chair for the focus group on education. I’m asking for your help!

I need a group who would be willing to get together and brainstorm some ideas. We’ll talk about topics, about the idea of webinars vs. face-to-face meetings, and how to best provide what our members need and want. Will you join us? I hope so!

I have scheduled a webinar meeting for the first focus group on Saturday, April 28, at 9 a.m. Mountain time. Our recent survey showed that many of you were interested in being involved in education so I am counting on a great turnout. All you need to do is register for the webinar, and bring your ideas! Together I’m sure we can create some awesome offerings!

Register for the Education Focus Group meeting.

The AHDI-MSR Board has put together a short survey and we want to hear from you! We need your input on how to move forward with the organization. Our goal is to be sure that the things we plan and do are really meeting member needs.

Would you please take a few minutes and fill out this survey? The deadline for completion is Thursday, April 5. Thanks for taking your time to do this. It matters!