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14 Aug 2004

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AAMT's - MT Public Opinion Poll Results..

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Dear Friends,

Excerpts from AAMT Response to Survey:

<There are highly motivated individuals all over the world who are investing
in their education and will invest in whatever credentialing or licensing is
required to carve out their niche in the world transcription marketplace.
Until or unless a US governing authority determines a reason to prohibit the
exchange of services between US healthcare providers and offshore
transcription providers, world marketplace MTs will continue to compete in
this arena. Isolationist ideology from either U.S. MTs or AAMT will do
nothing to alter this reality. AAMT has determined that the best agenda to
pursue in this regard is one that ensures a balanced playing field. If the
world marketplace wishes to compete for provision of services to U.S.
healthcare providers, then the world marketplace needs to be held
accountable for ensuring and demonstrating quality documentation and patient
safety standards in order to do so. The first step in establishing that
potential is in promoting a standard for high quality in the documentation
process, one that all practitioners will be expected to demonstrate in order
to have access to US medical records for the purposes of documenting patient
care. History has taught us that the most successful people, those who
survive transition, are those who are best able to predict and then respond
to change. If the primary concern of U.S. MTs is truly the safety and
protection of patient health information, then AAMT's efforts to establish
quality standards and mandatory credentialing should be perceived as
directly aimed at affecting that concern.>

<We want the world marketplace to know that AAMT is here to stay and that we
will be advocating for patient safety, quality documentation, and the
mandatory credentialing of any transcriptionist that is going to touch an
American healthcare record. We want the global MT marketplace to hear the
resounding message that if they hope to compete in this arena, for our
services, they better be prepared. Obviously, this means that U.S. MTs need
to hear the same message. If you lack the experience, education and skill
to step into that emerging arena, you will not remain relevant for long.
You will be readily discarded in this global marketplace. While we advocate
for standards and mandatory credentialing in the healthcare community, we
are urging our membership to be ready to step up to the plate and
demonstrate the ability to meet those standards once they are in place.

Finally, new health information platforms and different forms of data
capture with the goal of accessing health information in real time will
dramatically change the playing field for transcriptionists in far greater
ways than outsourcing offshore ever will. If we do not come together as a
profession and determine how we can best fit into an electronic health
environment, those in charge of building the health information superhighway
may likely pave right over us. These are some of the most challenging times
right now for this profession, and all the more reason to vigilantly work
together to leverage our unique and special set of skills into a future role
that serves the health information field and promotes quality patient care.>

The entire poll result can be viewed here:
http://www.aamt.org/StaticContent/StaticPages/survey0504.html

Also, to participate in the survey of MTs in the US and India by Lesly
Kenney, who is an MBA graduate student doing a thesis comparing offshore to
US-based MT, please go to http://members.aol.com/mtstudy/information. If
you have any questions, mail Lesly directly at MTStudy@....

Ciao!

Maj (Dr.) Amit Chatterjee, SM
Strategist / Founder ~ mailto:amit@...
MT India ~ www.mtindia.org
"The Community of MT Professionals"

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ADVERTISEMENT:
----------------------
Wanted small MT company at Bangalore:

Looking to buy out a small MT company, with about 20 MTs, at Bangalore.

Contact in confidence, before Aug 20:
Maj (Dr) Amit Chatterjee, SM
Tel: +91-080-28096703/4
amit@...

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NEWS AND VIEWS :
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1) Medical transcription firms form body

Medical transcription firms in the country have formed the Indian Medical
Transcription Industry Association that will try to boost growth of the $100
million sector.

"The MT industry is poised to grow at a dramatic pace and in order to ensure
that this pace is harnessed and a solid base created, IMTIA has been
formed," IMTIA president Suresh Nair told reporters here on Friday.

"This industry can generate employment to an additional 2,000 people every
year," he said.

IMTIA is also aiming to move up the value chain to render services such as
electronic medical records, medical coding and billing services, documents
imaging, data warehousing and high end services like radiology.

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/805629.cms

2) Acusis Extends Offshore Site Visit to Valued Customer

Acusis recently hosted a site audit for a valued long-term customer at two
of the Company's four Indian locations in Bangalore and Chennai. The Company
randomly chose several customers and prospects to visit their Indian
operations as part of a focused initiative to make both customers and
prospects aware of offshore companies who are committed to best business
practices and careful due diligence research in all areas of company
operations and process application. The customers and prospects were chosen
through a random drawing at the Customer Summit, an informational gathering
of medical industry colleagues, hosted earlier this year by Acusis at the
Saddlebrook Resort in Tampa, Florida.

As part of the planned two week visit, Terry Ciskowski of Baptist Medical
Center in Jacksonville, Florida, made the rounds at both office sites,
meeting staff and team members with whom she has worked and talked to for
months but never had the chance to meet in person. According to Ciskowski,
she found security and confidentiality to be "very high on the priority
list" in her visits to Acusis with the off-site home transcriptionists, the
on-site developers and the quality assurance / control teams. She was
particularly excited about being able to follow the Acusis process, detailed
to her and performed for her organization, from the time the files are
marked for export on Baptist Medical Center's system until they are returned
to the facility. She was able to see, firsthand, how all files are encrypted
before leaving the US and felt that attention to detail regarding privacy
and security were outstanding, including the fact that home-based
transcriptionists in India see no personal information pertaining to
patients - they only hear what is dictated in the report and that all
personal work stations and systems are locked and password protected. All in
all, her assessment included the acute and relevant observation that the
transcriptionists "take great pride in their work."

http://home.businesswire.com/portal/site/google/index.jsp?ndmViewId=news_view&ne\
wsId=20040806005045&newsLang=en

3) Saudi Women Make Debut in MT

Saudi women, long confined to teaching and medical professions, made their
debut in new fields this summer. They include the jobs of medical
transcriptionists and receptionists at call centers. Some firms have also
started hiring women as executive secretaries.

Speaking to Arab News on the summer transcription program, Hanan Al-Hamad,
who is doing a diploma course in medical transcription from the College of
Applied Studies and Community Services at King Faisal University, said it
was a five-week intensive transcription training in one of the hospitals in
Dammam.

The objective of the training program, she pointed out, was to learn the
hospital method of operating the transcription equipment (dictation system)
and to see the format of the medical reports. Asked if she found it a
challenging profession, she said yes "because no matter how much experience
you have, your ability will be tested in each report you type. In this
profession, you need to prove first to yourself that you are capable of
producing a high standard document."

http://www.arabnews.com/?page=1&section=0&article=49820&d=14&m=8&y=2004&pix=king\
dom.jpg&category=Kingdom

4) Three top-level managers are out at MedQuist

MedQuist Inc., a Mount Laurel medical records transcription company, has
shaken up its senior management after an outside financial probe revealed
improper billing practices.

In the statement, the company said chief executive officer Stephen H.
Rusckowski would be replaced by an interim manager, Howard S. Hoffmann, a
partner at Nightingale & Associates L.L.C., a Stamford, Conn., financial and
management consultant. Rusckowski will remain on the MedQuist board.

The company said it has accepted the resignations of its chief financial
officer, Brian Kearns, and chief legal officer, John Suender.

"Our priority mission now is to work with our customers to clarify and,
where appropriate, rectify any problems, make the needed changes and reforms
internally, and become current in our SEC filings," Hoffmann said in the
statement. "Our goal is to ensure that billing methods are reliable,
accurate, measurable and verifiable to customers using transcription
services."

MedQuist's board also announced "a broad program of changes and reforms to
the company's business practices," and said it had taken disciplinary action
against certain company employees.

MedQuist said the review by Debevoise & Plimpton L.L.P., a New York law
firm, and accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers L.L.P. "identified a number
of issues regarding the company's billing practices."

http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/9341265.htm

5) A graduate's perspectives on voice recognition
~Michelle Henneberry (M-TEC Graduate)

My job as editor started out by printing up the chart note as it existed
after being transcribed by voice recognition and then going phrase by phrase
and retyping in what was actually said, thereby teaching the Voice
Recognition Machine. I did that for about a week and my boss then just told
me to forget that and to copy and save the voice recognition files and just
type the report. It takes too long to teach the machine and those notes need
to be done and in the files. So I am once again a transcriptionist and
loving it.

http://www.mtecinc.com/content.aspx?id=99

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Thank you for your interest in MT India!

The MTIndia Team
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