Can anyone tell me if it makes a difference which online program you use? I’ve heard that potential employers look for someone that’s been trained by an AHDI approved program. But when I asked Future MT, a non-approved program, they said that their program was as good as the others on AHDI’s list but you have to pay to get on that list and they simply choose not to, so as to pass that savings on to the student.

I found that an interesting response from FutureMT because it’s wrong on so many levels. Well – I suppose it makes sense if you’re trying to justify to prospective students why you aren’t on that list. I wonder how many people fall for it (probably quite a few). Because if you go read that discussion at MT Chat, you’ll see that Mike DeTuri broke down the cost per student based on XX number of students and it’s pretty negligible. And aside from that, schools don’t pay to get on the list, they pay a fee to apply to be on the list – big difference. A school can pay the fee and submit the required information and if they don’t meet the requirements, they still aren’t approved – and they don’t get a refund of their application fee.

So I moseyed on over to the FutureMT web site to see what their web site says about them. And I discovered something else interesting about FutureMT:

Future MT is not an accredited medical transcription course as a university within the state of incorporation, but rather a nationally recognized online education course using similar guidelines of major Universities.

When it comes to voluntary programs designed to evaluate a school program, FutureMT doesn’t seem willing to waste its money, as it isn’t accredited by the state of Florida, where the company is based, either. Not unlike the transcription sites that all claim “best, fastest, cheapest,” making a claim of nationally recognized online education course is pretty easy. It can’t be verified, certified or accredited – but it sounds good! (Maybe I should change the MT Exchange tag line to nationally recognized online blogger.) There are a number of nationally recognized accreditations for distance learning programs, including the Distance Education & Training Council (DETC), Accrediting Council for Independent Colleges & Schools (ACICS) and Accrediting Commission of Career Schools and Colleges of Technology (ACCSCT). Accreditation by any one of these would at least give proof to the claim of nationally recognized online education.

In fact, this is one of the requirements to become an AHDI-approved school:

The school/program must be accredited or licensed through a governmental body.

So in terms of as good as, strike one for FutureMT.

What I like is the consistent theme: we’re saving money for our students!

Another benefit of Future MT’s course is that we do not have the large overhead needed to run a college, so we are able to pass those savings to our students and offer the same course at a more affordable cost.

I don’t know how prospective students read this, but it makes me wonder whether they have other cost-saving measures that might be cutting corners a tad too close – you know? Like – instructors. Like – curriculum.

Speaking of which…

Another requirement for AHDI approval is that the school must follow the Model Curriculum for Medical Transcription. And it’s really difficult to tell from the FutureMT website exactly where their coursework comes from.

The book Future MT uses is written by the staff of Health Professions Institute, which is the top name in the field, and extremely reputable. In fact, the founder of the American Association of Medical Transcription (AAMT) also founded HPI. Their materials are used widely among the most respected institutions.

As far as I can tell, the coursework (curriculum?) consists of handing you a book that can be purchased straight from Health Professions Institute (HPI) and the SUM Program practice recordings, which can also be obtained directly from HPI.

But wait – there’s more!

You get unlimited live mentoring with experienced MTs! I’m not hearing the word “instructor” or “teacher” there. For all I know, their definition of an experienced MT is someone with 2 weeks’ experience.

Students, at the appropriate time from Future MT instructors will be given access to the transcript keys and compare their work to the keys in a split-screen format, giving them immediate feedback on their errors.

Oh look – NOW we have “instructors.” Let me tell you something about giving students answer keys – they don’t learn much and it renders the rest of the exercise useless once someone has the answers.

But wait – there’s more!

I felt this part was worthy of a screen shot. Please comment if any of this makes sense to you.

Huh?

And in the FAQ titled How Long Will the Course Take to Finish?, I found this gem:

Future MT’s medical transcription training focuses on helping students find work quickly instead of spending more time training.

Yes, we certainly wouldn’t want future MTs to spend too much time training! Let’s focus instead on getting a job!

But wait – there’s more!

There’s an Employment Service!

And it’s part of the Guarantee!

So let me see if I understand… if taking a list of potential employers and bombarding them with resumes for 60 days doesn’t elicit any offers of employment – they’ll help you do it for another 12 months, hoping for a different response? (What are their affiliate transcription companies, anyway? I hope this isn’t just a list of transcription services they scrounged off Google.) Does everyone here understand the definition of insanity?

And every flippin’ page at FutureMT ends with this:

I have to wonder how much value there is to that guaranty when I’m getting bombarded with messages from graduates who can’t get a job. Money back? You can claim it within the first 30 days of enrolling. Of course, by the time you graduate and can’t get a job, the 30 days is long past.

Do I really need to keep going? Unfortunately, there seems to be no limit to the number of people willing to be the fodder for cheap programs that will take their money, turn them loose – and then fill up my mailbox with pleas for help getting that elusive job.Which is why I keep blogging about it – someday, I’d like to believe my yammering made a difference.

I think it’s pretty clear that: (a) not all transcription schools are equal and (b) FutureMT is not as good as a school that is licensed or accredited by a governmental body and approved by AHDI. Let me be clear – I don’t think AHDI approval is the be-all/end-all – but it is a distinction, a step up and frankly, all we’ve got. Given that, I think it’s essential that the medical transcription community supports that program.

But that’s not all…

OK, I have to save the very best for last. This just had my jaw dropping. I went to the LINKS page at FutureMT, expecting to find links to MT resources and information. Instead, I found this:

Is it just me – or is this about the tackiest thing ever for a professional website? The only MT site listed there is one owned by FutureMT. I mean, really – credit score reports and satellite dish links on a professional site?

(Look for my followup article next week on Medical Transcription Schools and the FTC)

Teeny tiny disclaimer: Like everything else at MT Exchange, this is only my opinion. Take it for what it’s worth.

When it comes to the business side of MT, many MTs lose all sense of  perspective. Although there is a general derision for hobby MTs, the flip side is that the same (or more) level of derision is applied to the corporate aspects of the business. It sends a message that small business is okay, big business is not and that my small business is better than your small business because I run a serious business, dammit! There’s an aura of superiority put off by those who look down on the hobby MT because s/he doesn’t treat MT like the business it is and make business-like decisions. They undercut prices, they aren’t adequately trained – golly, sometimes they aren’t even real MTs! However, while the attitude is that we should be business-like, there is a fair amount of derision heaped upon being too business-like. All that business rah-rah goes down the drain when it comes to the large MT businesses and even the not-so-small MT businesses. Men are suits and women who are too business-oriented are bitches.

What got me writing is a thread at MT Chat about the sale of M-TEC and changes taking place at that school.

I am not thrilled with the corporatization of MT or the fact that what used to be an industry of primarily women has been taken over by men in suits. Men don’t think the way women do and they don’t do business the way women do. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but sometimes it’s difficult for women to deal with, much like the toilet seat that’s left up. Unfortunately, any business dominated by women is going to look a lot like medical transcription; i.e., marginalized and commoditized and that has little to do with “the suits” and the corporations. I’ve been stiffed and mistreated just as often by the small local MTSO run by a woman as I have been by a large corporation run primarily by men. I’d rather work for a corporation run responsibly and by the book than a poorly-run small outfit and I don’t care whether a man or a woman is at the helm of either. Suits ≠ bad bad bad.

There is an attitude in the MT community that a transcription service owning/operating a transcription school is automatically A Bad Thing. Let’s apply some intelligence to this. First of all, M-TEC was originally owned and operated by owners of a transcription service. Maybe everyone has forgotten that in the intervening years. I don’t know how long Kathy and Susan ran a transcription business along with the school, but I know they ran a transcription service simultaneously with the school at some point. Second of all, the origins of this objection were based on small services with local clinic accounts that charged exorbitant sums of money to “school” people in MT. The curriculum (and I use the term loosely) was geared towards that service’s specific needs and was not even close to adequate for educating a well-rounded MT. The MTs who completed these “programs” were only employable by the service that ran the “school” they attended. This worked fine for both parties as long as the transcription service actually had work for the MTs completing the “school.” The problems arose when those people, thinking I R A MT, lost or left that job and represented themselves in the wider MT community as a trained medical transcriptionist with experience. Which – by every definition – they were! However, because their education, training and experience were so narrowly confined to that one service, they found they were simply unemployable elsewhere – and had to start all over again. That is not the case with M-TEC, whether we’re talking about past or present owners. WebMedX, in fact, would be able to provide an excellent training ground for MTs because they have contracts with a wide variety of facilities. If they intend to employ many of the MTs who attend M-TEC, then it’s a win/win situation for MTs and for WebMedX. On top of that, M-TEC gets a real boost to its placement numbers. Any MT who has completed the M-TEC program and worked for a year or two for WebMedX would most likely have no more trouble finding another job than any Andrews School graduate. So – get a grip, people! Transcription Service + Transcription School ≠ Bad bad bad, either.

The next big criticism was the shortened time allowed to complete the program before additional fees are assessed. I think what many of the participants in that discussion are not realizing is that there are many, many community colleges offering medical transcription certificate programs and that’s really the competition. I don’t have numbers, but based on my discussions with a lot of educators at those programs, the college programs are a bigger competitor than other online schools. Most of these colleges have 9-month programs and many of the requirements are regulated by the community or state education system. I was at a meeting of educators earlier this year and the college educators said that if they made the MT certificate program a 2-year program, they wouldn’t get any students. Several months ago, I did a spreadsheet of what the schools charge and some of the community colleges were the most expensive (depending on location), especially for out-of-state students. The number of credits required to complete the certificate program and the cost per credit jumped some of these well over the $5K range for tuition. While the prior owners ran a good business, the new owners have an investment (i.e., the purchase price) that the prior owners didn’t have and they need to see return on that investment. Therefore, their focus is going to be a little different and more aggressive than the prior owners’.

And while higher fees may push some people to the less expensive schools, I don’t think it’s going to make that much of a difference. Someone who price shops their education doesn’t even get as far as M-TEC or Andrews – they think Career Step is too expensive and they’re agonizing over that or one of the $900 programs.

Andrews can’t – and won’t – take everyone who applies. As I’ve said in prior posts about transcription schools, the stance that it’s “M-TEC or Andrews” (and now if you take M-TEC out of the equation, it’s just Andrews) is just unrealistic. If your dream is to see every other transcription school shut down, consider the consequences – a mass shrinkage in the labor force. We can’t even say that’s a good thing, since the MT industry has been defying the usual influences of supply and demand for years now. I’m not sure what anyone thinks would be the positive consequences of this, or what MTs who believe in “M-TEC or Andrews” think would happen to the quality of education at those schools if they started expanding to take more candidates. (Hint: There’s a reason Harvard and Yale are so expensive and have higher admission standards. They don’t take just anyone, either.)

Can an MT program be completed in 9 months? Of course it can. Just because an MT who took longer “can’t imagine” completing the program in less time doesn’t mean it isn’t possible. Someone who is truly desperate to get into the job market can complete a self-study course in much less time than that, even. It takes focus and hard work – but I know more than one MT who eschewed Andrews in favor of a self-study course they could get through quickly so they could get a job faster. Take your pick – be broke for 2 years because you’re working part time and going to school part time, be really broke for 2 years because your school won’t let you complete faster and there aren’t any local jobs available or you live in a rural area – or be really broke for 9 months or less because you’re going all out to complete a program so you can get a full-time job and stop being broke. There’s a reason community colleges can’t “sell” a 2-year program. For one thing, the pay rates don’t justify it and for another, most people wanting to enter MT need to get into the job market faster than that.

It costs money for a school to carry people who are poking along in the program. What WebMedX is doing is requiring people to make a real commitment to their education. Having to expend considerable money and a significant amount of time speaks to motivation and commitment.

I’m going to share with you one of my first experiences about learning the value of money and commitment. I joined a martial arts class at the university in the town where I lived. The instructors were volunteers and the university let the group work out in a room in the physical education building. Although the stated fee was $5 per month, it was like it was voluntary – nobody really made an effort to collect it and most students didn’t pay it. When I had gained some seniority, I told the senior instructor I was taking over the treasury – then I started aggressively collecting the fee. Oh, the whining! Even the instructor whined, telling me these were poor college students who couldn’t afford $5 a month for martial arts. I looked him in the eye and told him “they spend more than that on beer every Friday night.” Then I looked them in the eye and told them “you spend more than that on beer every Friday night.” Did we lose students? No, we didn’t. In fact, we had a resurgence of participation. Paying $5 per month was enough to motivate these students to make a real commitment to studying martial arts and working out. People who had previously come to class only when they felt like it now attended every class. For $5 a month, they didn’t try to find time for class – they made time for class. People who had worked out with a modicum of effort either dropped out altogether or started working harder. The club finally had money to buy equipment and have social events (read: parties) at the end of the quarter after belt testing.

Someone who is having financial difficulty will either decide they simply can’t complete the program in 9 months and they’ll go elsewhere – or they’ll knuckle down and work twice as hard to finish the program before having to pay more money to extend the education – 0r pay more money to extend the education. The MT benefits by getting into the job market faster. WebMedX benefits by getting more potential candidates faster. And if WebMedX considers itself the #1 employer of its graduates – do you really think they’re going to do anything that results in their getting less qualified graduates? If employers won’t hire their graduates, if they find their own graduates aren’t adequately trained to work for them – they’ll suffer the consequences of their own decision and make adjustments.

WebMedX made (presumably) a huge investment in M-TEC. From a business standpoint, it’s in their best interest to do what is most profitable and will get them the best return on their investment. Whether or not they feel preserving the reputation of the school is a necessary part of that investment remains to be seen, but they could’ve bought any of a dozen lesser schools if they didn’t care about name recognition and reputation.

I’ve said it many times over the years when a group of MTs criticizes the decisions of a business – if you don’t like the way a business is run, feel free to start your own. You can run it any way you like, including making decisions that eat into your profit so you can please the masses of faceless MTs criticizing you in the forums.

I live and breathe to enlighten you.

What follows is a cautionary tale to those who search the internet for information on how to work at home as a medical transcriptionist. The rest of us – you know, the choir – can only look on in horror.

How Google ads work

It helps to have some knowledge of how Google ads work. You see them everywhere you go; maybe you’ve wondered how they work (maybe you haven’t!). There are two sides to Google ads: advertisers, who want to place ads (Adwords) and publishers, who run the ads on their sites (Adsense). When an advertiser runs an ad campaign in Adwords, they pay Google. When a publisher places Google Adsense ads on their site, they get paid by Google when someone clicks on a link in the ad. High-volume publishers get enough people to the site to also be paid per 1000 impressions, or the number of times the ads are displayed to users. Low-volume publishers don’t get enough page impressions to make much money this way – they rely on the ad clicks to make money. Google, of course, takes a cut in the middle. The entire system is based on keywords, keyword phrases – the perceived value of the keywords (i.e., the number of people searching that keyword) and the traffic of a publishing site.  Advertisers can select keywords relevant to their product (in this case, medical transcription) and they can target specific web sites that get a lot of traffic. The more advertisers there are competing for a keyword phrase, the higher the cost goes because it’s a bidding process. Likewise, the more traffic a site gets and the more advertisers competing to be seen on it, the more it’s going to cost the advertiser.

I could spend days on this, but I’ll try and keep it simple because that’s not the focus of this topic.

Let’s say I want to place ads for my MT jobs site on a bunch of MT-related web sites that run Google ads, using the keyword phrase medical transcription. And let’s say that specifically, I want my ads to display at MT Chat. I start an ad campaign in my Google Adwords account and specify the keyword phrase medical transcription, then I select the option to target specific web sites. Google will retrieve a list of sites for me, but I don’t need them to – I know I want my ads to run at MT Chat. I then bid on how much I want to pay per click and what my daily budget is for the campaign. Now, I can bid whatever I like – I can say I’ll pay $0.25 per click. And Adwords will let me do that – but they’ll also pop up a message saying that my ad has a slim-to-none chance of ever showing up on MT Chat. Why? Because medical transcription is a high-value keyword phrase and MT Chat is a high-volume site, so there are a lot of advertisers targeting not only the keyword phrase, but the web site, as well. The more you’re willing to pay, the better chance you have of your ads showing up on the specified web site. Adwords lets me know that other advertisers are paying more for that phrase and makes a suggestion as to how much I might have to pay to have my ad show up there. The more I’m willing to pay, the better my chances are of having my ad seen. There are keywords that are paying advertisers a handsome amount (mesothelioma was a popular one for quite awhile and paid upwards of $30 per click!). If I choose not to target a specific site, it’s cheaper – my ads will show up on any page where the term medical transcription is found, which is why you see ads related to the topic in a discussion forum.

How this translates to medical transcription and matchbook schools

There is a thriving business on the internet known as internet marketing. Some people are very good at it, some are very bad at it, but what is pertinent to the readers here at MT Exchange is this: medical transcription careers is a very lucrative niche for internet marketers.

If you search the term medical transcription in Google, what you get in return is a mixed bag of sites about medical transcription services, medical transcription training and medical transcription courses. In the Google search results world, medical transcription is a very competitive term. People who want to work at home seem to be one of America’s greatest renewable resources; and as we all know, medical transcription has been an attractive work-at-home career for a very long time. There are approximately 18,000 searches a day for the term medical transcription.  That’s a lot of searches. To give you an idea of how competitive this term is, there are over 1.8 million web pages that contain the term and over 800,000 pages that contain the term in the title.

The web site that gets to the #1 spot in the Google search engine results (SER) is the big winner, capturing a huge portion of the traffic. Currently in that spot is Gatline Education Services. Gatline is not an AHDI-approved school and some of you probably haven’t even ever heard of it. So what do they get for being in the #1 spot? They will get 45% more clicks than the #2 site, which is currently the Department of Labor site. All I can say is Gatline must have some awesome people working on their search engine optimization because Google weighs government sites ahead of commercial sites in their results. The farther down the list a site is, the less likely it will be seen – the drop in clicks between the #1 and the #2 spot is bad, worse for #3 and progressively worse down the list, so that if a site isn’t in the top 5 results, it has a very small chance of being seen. While Gatline doesn’t run Google ads, being in the #1 spot means that anyone searching for medical transcription is more likely to click on their site than any other – which means they get more traffic.

In the internet marketing world, it would be foolish to try and compete for the #1 (or even #2-5) spot for this keyword phrase. The advice is – pick something that has fewer searches but also less competition. Sure, the ad revenue will be less, but your chances of getting to the #1 spot are much better – and something is better than nothing.

Here’s an example: if you were an Adsense publisher in the #1 spot for the keyword phrase medical transcription, the anticipated revenue you’d receive from having Google ads on your site would be (drumroll please) – nearly $27,000 per day. That number is based on the number of searches and the statistics for searchers not only clicking through to view that #1 site, but also clicking on the ads (and believe me – Google is all about statistics and therefore so is anyone with a serious web-based business).

On the flip side of that, medical transcription schools is searched only approximately 250 times a day and the site holding down the #1 position could expect Adsense revenue of approximately $1,000 per day. While nothing close to the $27,000 per day for medical transcription, it’s still nothing to sneeze at, and there’s less competition. There are only approximately 30,000 sites mentioning the phrase and only 16,000 sites using the phrase in the page title. That’s why, if you search the specific term “medical transcription schools,” you get a lot of crappy sites dedicated to nothing more than providing Google ads and affiliate sales for one of the schools that offers a high affiliate payout. (Google isn’t the only way to make money on the internet.) Currently sitting in the #1 spot is an affiliate site for Allied – which is also not an AHDI-approved school.

The obvious benefit to someone like Gatline Education – which doesn’t run Google ads – is capturing a huge share of the search market and selling to them directly. They’re capturing people who are already interested in what they’re selling and they are getting more of them than any of the other sites selling similar products/services.

Apparently, the more credible schools don’t feel the need to improve their search engine rankings – or they just don’t know how all this works. If there were more of them showing up in the top 5 spots for the search engines, there’d be fewer hopefuls shunting off to the questionable schools.

The site that got me started

No, I’m not going to give them the pleasure of a link. But it was an awful/funny exercise in targeted keywords by an affiliate marketer. The site is owned by someone in India. I could’ve guessed that, even without checking the domain name registry. It’s targeting medical transcription keyword phrases (the low-lying fruit ones). They’re giving away an “Easy Cash Blueprint” e-book – but you have to provide an e-mail address to get it, which means that address will be spammed from a mailing list in the hopes of selling you products. At the very least, they’re hoping visitors will click on the Google ads at the site.

There’s the really awful content (I’ve italicized the obvious keyword phrase being targeted by this marketer):

I am sure your quest for Medical Transcription Book has come to an end as you read this article. Yes, gone are those days when we have to search endlessly for Medical Transcription Book information or other such information like protein protein comparison, free voice to text software, transcription desk or even group transcription services. Even without articles such as this, with the Internet all you have to do is log on and use any of the search engines to find the Medical Transcription Book information you need.

If this article still doesn’t answer your specific Medical Transcription Book quest, then don’t forget that you can conduct more search on any of the major search engines like Search.Yahoo.com to get specific Medical Transcription Book information.

A career in medical transcription has a lot been going for it. Here we are facing an economic downturn and this field is only likely to thrive in these times. The medical transcription industry is set to steadily grow as the population ages.

All that useful information crap was packed into one article! First of all – would you read that garbage and then buy something? Better yet – would you want someone who read it and then paid for it to be working next to you?

Just as a note, medical transcription book gets a little over 100 searches a day. If this bozo captures the #1 spot in the search results for that term, there’s a good chance of making about $100/day from the Google ads. Heck, there are MTs who don’t make that much! Unfortunately for this hapless marketer, this site doesn’t even turn up in the top 10 of the results (although it is on the first page). With a little more work, it might make it there!

Here’s another one:

Title: Free Medical Transcription Helpful Information

As you devour this article, remember that the rest of it contains valuable information related to Free Medical Transcription and in some way related to home based medical transcription jobs, transcription from home, medical transcription position or global medical transcription for your reading pleasure.

(skip to the end) It might interest you to know that lots of folks searching for Free Medical Transcription also got information related to other medical billing, sirna delivery, and even transcription services bangalore here with ease.

Again, the obvious keyword stuffing that tells you nothing and frequently doesn’t even make sense. In one article at this site, the keywords were actually preceded by the word keyword. (where’s my rolling eyes icon?) I don’t even know what sirna delivery is – but I know it makes no sense in this article.

And my personal favorite wins the award for complete nonsense. This is the first paragraph:

If your major interest is information related to Learn Medical Transcription or any other such as medical transcription job opportunities, transcription systems, allegiant transcription services or dictation services, this article can prove useful.

Nonsensical use of keyword phrases is a sign of a novice who found the keyword phrases with low competition, but didn’t use half a brain cell in applying them to the article. I’d rather think that than think this person’s English is so awful this actually makes sense to them.  In addition, this bright marketer apparently researched the keyword phrases that were low competition and discovered that Allegiant transcription services fit the bill – and so it was included in this garbled paragraph!

The next time someone online asks you about a matchbook school, ask them where they learned about it. Chances are, it was through the internet version of  a matchbook.

Please don’t get distracted by AHDI here – I’ll comment in another blog post about AHDI and some discussions I had with those present that were pertinent to AHDI.

Already, you’re noticing something different – the job title, right? Everyone in the room agreed that the scope of medical transcription is changing. I think there are few business owners and working MTs who would disagree with that. More and more clinics and hospitals are moving to electronic medical records (EMRs) and either discontinuing dictation altogether or attempting to integrate transcription with the software. They’re also demanding that outsourced medical transcription services utilize technology to decrease costs and turnaround times, with speech recognition (although it seems the newest term for this is speech understanding), turning medical transcriptionists into editors.

The medical transcription industry is struggling with these changes. These changes don’t affect only transcriptionists; they affect the entire chain, from the physicians and the facilities where they must document healthcare to the outsourced service owners to the information technology services and support. Right now, nobody is quite sure where we will all end up – we’re all just pretty sure the demand for someone who wants to just sit and transcribe from voice will go down and some sort of blended job will emerge.

Probably the best thing that could happen in this blended job would be for technology to tie the actual documentation process in with the coding and billing process (the revenue cycle). This would place the documentation process itself (rather than the document) into the revenue cycle – that “missing link” that MT has always struggled with in order to find value for itself. It’s very possible that as the EMR technology advances, the MT (a term I’m going to use just because it’s easier and I don’t want anyone to get confused) may be looking at coding a document at the same time it’s produced; it’s also possible there won’t be any audio dictation, or very little audio dictation, or that the record will be transcribed by SR and sent to the MT for editing and coding verification. In spite of the fact that many in the industry believe that it will be necessary to include dictation to get more physicians to adapt to the technology – and because, quite frankly, it’s usually faster than alternatives – this still doesn’t address the demand for point-of-care documentation. Dictated records for handling by another person (i.e., the MT) will never provide point-of-care documentation. I’m not disagreeing that dictating is usually faster and a better use of physician time or that it will speed adoption of EMRs – I’m just pointing out that it won’t ever be a point-of-care documentation solution.

And no matter how many people with years and years of experience in the industry sit in a seminar and discuss these topics – it’s all theory at this point. Nobody knows any of this for sure. We do know what the current job is; we also know we need to prepare the people who are currently MTs and the people who want to be MTs for a future that may require a broader scope of job skills. Kathy Striebel, from Mira Costa College, said she has many more people now enrolling in the coding and medical billing courses than the medical transcription ones; part of the reason for the seminar was to discuss curriculum for preparing people for a blended job.

And frankly, I think it’s about time. We aren’t any of us making much money in the traditional medical transcription industry. Compensation is going down, costs are going up, and competitors continue to drive down pricing in crazy cutthroat competition (argh!) that doesn’t benefit anyone.

Skill Set

We had an interesting discussion about the skill set required by the knowledge-based worker in the emerging healthcare documentation environment. I’m interested in knowing how MTs feel about this.

• Hardware and software proficient
• Content and technology enabled medical editing
• interpersonal business skills targeted towards distributed virtual workforce (telecommuters)
  - time management and discipline
• Critical thinking/problem solving
• Knowledge of pathophysiology, anatomy, physiology and body systems, diagnostic procedures, laboratory data, pharmacology
• Critical and interpretive listening
• Digital and internet proficiency
• Knowledgable about privacy, security and ethics
• Knowledgable about healthcare compliance and risk management
• Awareness and knowledge of medical-legal issues
• Familiar with documentation workflow
• Coding skills
• Billing practices understanding
• American English language and regional syntax proficiency

Keep in mind that the curriculum being developed is for students who are just entering a college program that takes almost 2 years to complete.

One employer stated that when she had to outsource some of her transcription, she was unable to use the smaller service she would have preferred because they didn’t have the technology capability required to service the hospital. It isn’t just individual MTs who will need to be tech-enabled; the outsourced services need to be, as well.

Recently passed legislation now holds anyone handling PHI to the same standards and penalties as a covered entity. Whether or not you think the doctors and clinics you work for, or your clients, care or whether or not you think there will ever be a problem in your small corner of the world – there are a lot of mom-and-pop long-term care facilities that are now out of business because they never thought the Medicare auditors would come down on their heads.

Look at the list of skills and ask yourself – is there much in there that can’t be described as knowledge based? Can these skills take us to a job description that will place more value on what we know than how many widgets we can produce?

Job Title

Medical transcriptionist simply doesn’t adequately describe this evolving blended job. In addition to being more descriptive, I think that a new job title focuses more on the knowledge skills of the job and less on the current production-based commodity of medical transcription.

Healthcare documentation technician: This describes the most basic level of the job, probably comparable on skill level to what the Hay Group study describes as a level 1 transcriptionist.

Healthcare documentation specialist: This is probably where many in the industry are currently at, or what the Hay Group study describes as a level 2 transcriptionist.

Healthcare documentation analyst: This job title excites me. Just the term “analyst” makes a strong statement about the knowledge level of the person with this education and experience. This is level 3 and beyond, encompassing all the skill sets.

Credentialing

Someone asked me in another discussion why AHIMA has been so successful in getting its credential accepted, where AAMT/AHDI has not. I don’t know the answer to that, but I’ve made myself a note to ask someone in AHIMA leadership. Whenever you see a job advertised for HIM, the employer usually specifies that a credential is required. This “requirement” is internal – there is no external requirement that these positions be credentialed. However, there are enough people who value the credential that when a job is posted with this requirement, there will be more credentialed applicants than noncredentialed applicants.

The problem in MT is that the opposite is true. Even if employers specified “credential preferred” in their ads – and they don’t – there are so few credentialed MTs that everyone knows it’s not really going to make a difference. If 9 people with 10 years’ experience and 1 person with 2 years’ experience and a credential apply for the job, do any of us really believe the person with the credential will be given “preferential” hiring? (No.)

I’ll save the deep discussion on credentialing for another blog, so start thinking about it. I think it’s something MTs really need to consider if they’re going to make any progress – whether it’s the CMT from AHDI or the RHIT from AHIMA.

Getting Experience

Continuing on the subject of credentialing (kind of)…

The reason I went to this seminar was to talk with people in education about what can be done to help MTs get into the job market post graduation and if there’s a way I can help employers and new graduates by offering something through MT Registry and what that might be. This isn’t an area of transcription I’ve really kept up on, especially in terms of what AHDI is doing in this regard, but I knew this has always been an issue and that it’s one AAMT/AHDI has tried to address.

Which brings us to the apprenticeship program. After years of hard work, AAMT/AHDI was finally able to get the Department of Labor to recognize MT as an apprenticeable job. Unfortunately, this has been a huge failure, for a variety of reasons. However, I’m told by employers that nobody can afford to pay a new graduate an hourly rate for 2 years, which makes employers reluctant to take on an apprentice.

Then, there are internships. An internship is an unpaid position and my guess is that this wouldn’t be terribly successful either, as most people can’t afford to work for 90 days without making any money. On the flip side of that, the employer can’t afford to put someone on the books for 90 days at at least minimum wage so they can train them, either.

Mira Costa College is going to add 10 hours of dictation to their curriculum, which a student must complete before completing the program. Still – that’s not a lot of dictation. In reality, if you convert lines to minutes at 10 lines/minute and realize that a company requires an MT to produce 1000 lines/day as an employee, that’s only 6 days of work. It’s going to be a start, but that’s all it is.

In my opinion, the ideal would be for schools offering medical transcription programs to add a module to do transcription on dead files for 3 months, with the requirement that productivity and quality guidelines be met prior to program completion. And anyone who can’t meet those guidelines within the 3 months wouldn’t graduate.

So where does that leave us?

Unresolved, I’m afraid! I’m going to save further comments for another post – I wanted to keep this one focused on the actual seminar I attended and I think there’s enough here to keep readers thinking for a week or so.