Monday, April 20, 2009

The Perfect Day


Everyone has a vision of the perfect day. Sunshine blue skies at the beach. Fresh powder on the slopes for spring skiing. A quiet afternoon with a favorite book. A day at the spa for pampering and indulgence. The list goes on and everyone has their own vision of what that day might look like. For me, the perfect day would be the one where the following takes place:

Morning: Healthcare documentation professionals everywhere have joined forces and now more than 200,000 have found common ground and been heard clearly above the noise and chatter of healthcare reform. They have united and have secured their future as professionals who have for years contributed tremendous value to patient care. This profession was long thought of as adding cost, but it has come to light that this documentation sector adds exceptional value to accuracy and completeness in a patient's medical reports. It is what we do, and yet so few people know it or appreciate our knowledge. They say "we type what is dictated." Anyone who has ever done this job knows it is so much more than that. Until we as a profession can put aside the pointing fingers at problems, placing blame, quit focusing exclusively on pay first, measure our contributions and begin to demonstrate the value add, we cannot experience that perfect day. Are you ready for that perfect day? I say it is long overdue. No matter how tough we think we have it, we don't have to look very far to see those in much worse circumstances. We have time to recast our future, but we cannot do it alone. Let's work together towards that perfect day.

Afternoon: The next part of my perfect day would be the evening news stating that scientists around the world have confirmed that we have finally slowed and turned back the clock on global warming. The news report would go on saying....Evidence now shows that so many people continue to do little things to make a big difference and there is now solid proof that the polar ice is once again gaining mass and polar bears are making a strong recovery. Fewer species are facing extinction and our timeline for climate change has dramatically improved. And with alternative energy sources and creative technologies, there is an excellent chance we can turn this around completely. Now that would be a perfect end to a most excellent day!

This week, we will celebrate Earth Day on 4/22 and National Arbor Day on 4/24. As we think about the things we can do to improve our world, let us also think about how we sustain our professional world and move it forward for a better career and one that brings not only job satisfaction at the end of each day but the promise for even better days ahead where we embrace new technologies and put our expertise to work. Now wouldn't that really be a perfect day? Be part of the solution - take action - talk to your employer today about the tremendous value you provide every day!

Wednesday, April 1, 2009

What Tomorrow Holds

We talk about an evolving profession and evolving our careers in healthcare documentation's future. One that works within EHRs and can utilize our expertise and critical thinking skills combined with our command of the language of medicine in a relevant and contributing way. Trying to look into the future and see what these jobs might look like is not an easy task but it is one that we must begin to contemplate to help us with this evolution and to identify the matching of a very extensive skillset with demands of a system that many of us have not yet seen.

One of the most important things for us to do is to stay involved. Stay connected, continue to network and stay informed on the technology that will form the basis of electronic healthcare delivery. Again, I am convinced that there is a great future ahead for all of us with the knowledge that we have as point and click will not adequately capture the entire patient's story. But what else might we do? Speech recognition is a great tool and can help create tools to use for those who don't want to transcribe in the traditional manner.

The evolution as I see it is one based on getting far more closer to real-time documentation. This is something that I wrote about in a futuristic article in Plexus, July 2008, called Headlines: 2018. The future gets closer everyday and when we try to imagine what that future might look like, we can begin to imagine how we are a big part of the solution to help our colleagues in HIM pull all the parts together. Quality of the entire EHR - dictated reports, clinician entered reports, we can ensure quality and content completeness in all parts of the record. Let's think of chart completion or as we called it in the old days, chart analysis or chart deficiencies done remotely? How about chart auditing done remotely? What if those facilities who use scribes utilized a technology like Blue Tooth and enabled this process to be done just as fast, but remotely?

The challenge is on - let's find those new future jobs and let's step up to fill them. What are your thoughts about how we can help bridge the gap to the allied health professions worker shortage?