The idea of organizing a trade association
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Posted by M on May 19, 2005 at 08:38:47
I have been seeing the writing on the wall that MTs are going to potentially be really beaten down over the next few years without organizing a trade association. I know there have been discussions on this board about the idea, about whether it would be better to take back the AAMT as a true representative of the practicing MT or to create a new organization from scratch. What I would want if we did start from scratch would be to promote most of the same original objectives that the AAMT was founded with, promoting the profession in the eyes of the public and the medical community. Right now there is no one doing that. There are plenty of people promoting offshore, speech recognition, template-driven EMR, etc., but no one promoting the fact that the best quality job can be done in the most economic way in the long run by a properly trained domestic MT. I would envision there would end up being duplication with the AAMT, mainly in that what they have done is unsuccessful in light of the fact they represent the MT industry more than the working MT. We would create our own certification program, one that is a little more realistic (i.e. references can be used), a school approval program, maybe create our own "book of style" and educational materials. We would be actively involved in the educational process and recruitment of new MTs into the profession. We would conduct research into the error rate in the finished document of edited offshore work, edited VR work, versus quality entry the first time around, and publish those findings and promote them. We would partner with the medical profession/clinicians to promote better dictation and the use of MTs to actually save them time and money when the cost of their potentially billable time is factored in, versus alternative entry methods such as clinicin-driven EMR. I am thinking of memberships in the range of 25, 35, 45 per year to start, and a simple newsletter and reporting of how the money was being used. There would be lots of opportunity for volunteerism, especially in the beginning, but for those who don't have the time, just the annual dues would contribute to the promotion of the profession. There would be opportunity to use our strength in numbers to write our congressmen on offshore-related issues and other issues that affect the profession. There would also be opportunity to contribute through answering surveys. And this would definitely by an American association. Anyone want to share their thougts about this idea?
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