2009 MTIA Conference Recap

PRN Funding recently had the opportunity to connect with many MTSOs and medical transcriptionists when we exhibited at the 20th Annual MTIA Conference in Louisville, KY a couple of weeks ago.

Account Manager, Joanna Schafer, represented PRN Funding in booth #26, and she had the opportunity to speak with a number of MTSOs about the benefits of PRN Funding’s medical transcription funding program.

In a recap email, MTIA listed a slew of key issues and priorities discussed at this year’s conference as well, namely:

  1. The 2009 MTIA Conference had 80 first-time attendees.
  2. MTIA membership grew by 10%.
  3. Attendees wholeheartedly supported a uniform visibility campaign comprised of advocacy to key health policymakers and a public relations strategy focused on the sector’s contribution to quality patient care delivery.
  4. MTIA recognized that the recently enacted HITECH Act (Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act) and healthcare reform present tremendous opportunities for the clinical documentation sector, as long as the sector is organized and focused.
  5. “Discrete reportable transcription” can be integrated with EHR technology as a method of increasing EHR adoption.
  6. With the number of consumers who are documenting their personal health stories continues to increase and more outcomes driven data coming from the provider community, there are new dynamic business models being created for the clinical documentation sector.
  7. The Health Story Project promotes and enhances the value of narrative text in the age of EHRs by producing and encouraging the adoption of  standards for the flow of information between common types of healthcare documents and EHRs.
  8. The SRT Summit held an active dialogue concerning the impact of SRT on the clinical documentation sector with an ultimate goal of creating a white paper to assist MTSOs with the challenges of purchasing, adopting and implementing SRT.
  9. The QA Summit reviewed essential elements of a quality assessment process and outlined key components and metrics in order to begin producing a widely accepted quality standard protocol that will serve the healthcare community as prudent, efficient, cost-effective, valid, reliable and scalable to ensure quality of all health records.

Fewer Uninsured Patients Seek Hospital Care

Many healthcare industry analysts and investors expected hospital chains to see more uninsured patients in the first quarter as a result of the economic decline and rising unemployment. Surprisingly, however, many hospitals noted a decrease in uninsured patients coming through their doors in the first few months of 2009.

In fact, Franklin-based Community Health Systems, which is the largest publicly-traded hospital chain, posted a 3% drop in uninsured admissions in some of its hospitals. In addition, Tenet Healthcare of Dallas unofficially reported that charity and uninsured admissions fell by more than 4%.

Analysts say that fewer uninsured patients are putting off healthcare, and programs like COBRA and Medicaid are helping pick up the slack, however, they are weary about the after-affects of the uninsured putting off care. It could hypothetically backfire when these patients get sicker and then seek medical care.

Click here to read the entire article: Hospital see fewer uninsured patients.

AAPC iTouch Winner Announced

Last month, PRN Funding announced that it would have a drawing  for a 16-gig iTouch at the 2009 American Academy of Professional Coders Conference in Las Vegas.

Attendees lined up at PRN Funding’s booth each day to learn about the benefits of medical coding factoring and medical billing factoring.

While at the booth, they also had a chance to fill out an entry form for a chance to win the iTouch. On the last day of the show, PRN Funding put all 535 entry forms from medical coding and billing professionals into our fish bowl and chose one.

Congratulations to Jean Pryor of Anderson Medical Billing who was the lucky winner!

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