Are Baby Boomer Nurses Burning Out?

AMN Healthcare published the results of their 2008 Survey of Nurses 45 to 60 Years Old Based on 2007 Data, and the research points to baby boomers nurses could be facing career burnout.  Fifty-five percent of nurses actively involved in patient care are 45 years old or older, and 36 percent on 50 and older.Of the 7,500 surveys mailed, 1,831 were returned with responses.  We have included some of the responses below:

52.6% are currently working in a permanent hospital staff position.51.1% have over 26 years of nursing experience. 

45.8 % of the nurses surveyed said they are less satisfied with their job now then they were five years ago. 

82.5% of the nurses surveyed identify the nurse shortage as the main source of the professional frustration. 

41.5% of those surveyed said that nursing is less dynamic, rewarding, and robust than when he/she began their nursing career 

Q: With the general aging baby boomer population looming, it’s easy to see how crucial temporary nurse staffing agencies will become in solving this nurse shortage problem.  How would you solve it?

VA Offers New Travel Nurse Program

It seems like everyone has something to say about the increasing nurse shortage, but there aren’t many who have come up with a solution to the ever-present problem.  According to a press release issued on March 11, the Department of Veteran Affairs has a plan–Travel Nurse Corps.

Headquartered at the Phoenix VA Health Care System, “participating nurses may be temporarily assigned to distant medical centers and clinics to help nursing staffs that have vacancies, to reduce wait times or the reliance upon contractors, or to maintain high-skill services and procedures.”

Click here to read the entire press release: VA’s New ‘Travel Nurse Program’ Hits the Road

Q: What do you think about this new venture?  Should Travel Nurse Corps be viewed as competition to private travel nurse staffing agencies?

Updates from AHDI and MTIA Partnership

We received a briefing the other day from the AHDI-MTIA partnership and it looks like they have been hard at work since they partnered in May 2007.  Here’s a glimpse of some of the current initiatives:

TROTTS, also known as Transcribed Report Optimum Turnaround Time, revolves around a study of both HIM directors/supervisors and MTSO managers/supervisors to measure their experiences with turnaround times (TAT), whether or not that time meets their needs and to help understand medical transcription industry challenges, financial impacts, as well as the impact of offshore medical transcription and Electronic Health Records (EHR).  This group will publish a White Paper that will establish defininitions and standards for TAT and will demonstrate how both the use of specific standards and turnaround time affect clinical decision-making.

ASRT (Automated Speech Recognition Technology Workgroup) is currently working on a type of “buyer’s guide to speech recognition technology,” which is scheduled to be completed in August 2008.

CDA4CDT, or the Clinical Document Architecture for Common Document Types brought together a large group of medical transcription industry stakeholders to help establish a common document architecture to preserve the narrative report component of histories, consultations, etc.  Within a year, the CDA4CDT group plans to make five mayor reports available: H&P, Consultations, Discharge Summary, Op Note and Imaging.

A QA Best Practices document is being put together which includes official verification of methods and sampling and still offers a methose to define errors in documentation in a numerical point system and also looks at the impact of time and cost involved with achieving quality assurance.  In addition, CEO Preziosi will eventually seek endorsement from The Joint Commission with a fully endorsed paper to follow in the fall.

Again, PRN Funding is excited about the partnership between MTIA and AHDI and the progress that it has made for the medical transcription industry during its first year is amazing.  We look forward to hearing more good news from them in the future.

AHDI Releases Third Addition of The Book of Style for Medical Transcription

As early as March, the Association for Healthcare Documentation Integrity (AHDI) will release the 3rd edition of The Book of Style for Medical Transcription.

The most recent edition of this widely acclaimed medical transcription industry standards manual comes with a boatload of new features.  Among the many changes, the AHDI web site highlights a reorganized layout for easier reference lookup, enhanced explanation of standards and practical application, robust examples taken from clinical medicine settings, and so much more.

Orders for the latest edition of the medical transcription stylus book are being taken now, with delivery dates occurring in March 2008.  AHDI also anticipates a subscription-based electronic release of the edition by the end of the year.

Click here to learn more about The Book of Style for Medical Transcription and how to pre-order it.

JustCoding.com Revamps its Web Site

HCPro, Inc. distributed a press release announcing the new additions to their Web site design.  Updates that affect the medical coding industry are constantly tracked and explained to medical coders on the new Web site www.JustCoding.com. 

 

The new web design also boasts enhanced search capabilities, faster access to critical coding information, and improved graphics and navigation which translates into meaningful improvements in users’ ability to access articles and updates offered on the site. In addition, improvements to the on-site search will enable medical coders to easily locate and identify numerous items offering continuing education credits, which are critical to maintaining users’ coder certification.

 

Visit HCPo, Inc’s web site here: http://www.JustCoding.com.

 

Read the entire press release here: Redesign of Healthcare Coding Industry Website Provides Medical Coders Better Access to Key CMS Changes.

 

 

 

PRN Funding Discusses Factoring with Medical Coding Community

PRN Funding, LLC and exclusive medical coding web site, MedicalCodingAndBilling.com joined forces when the medical coding web site published the first in a three-part series of articles: How Medical Coding Services can Improve Their Cash Flow by Choosing a Factor.


The three-part series was written with the medical coding service business owner in mind–going over the key components to think about when narrowing down which accounts receivable factoring firm is the best fit for the owner’s medical coding company.


Q: When shopping accounts receivable factoring firms, what kinds of questions do you ask?

Click here to read some frequently asked questions about invoice factoring.

Locum Tenens Continues Double-Digit Growth in Third Quarter

The cat is out of the bag, as it seems that more staffing professionals are getting interested in locum tenens staffing.

In a briefing issued by Robin Hessinger of Staffing Industry Analysts reports “In the third quarter, two public healthcare staffing firms’ locum tenens businesses saw growth of 15.5% and 21.2%, respectively…Locum tenens has been the best performing sub-segment of healthcare staffing, with unbroken double-digit growth from 2003 through 2006.  This compares with overall growth in healthcare staffing in the range of -8.5% to 7%.”

Q: It used to be that temp nurse staffing was the next big thing, then travel nurse staffing, followed by allied health.  What do you think lies ahead for locum tenens staffing?

American Academy of Professional Coders Invites Medical Coders to Participate in Survey

After reading the headlines in this week’s BC Advantage e-Newsletter, it appears that the American Academy of Professional Coders (AAPC) is conducting a “Work of a coder” survey. Calling on both certified and non-certified coders, the survey results will be used to examine the daily tasks and responsibilities of a coder and will provide guidance to employers on optimizing their coding staffs.

Click here to complete the Work of Coder Survey.

Major VMS Provider Declares Bankruptcy

This was an interesting article that appeared in the American Staffing Association’s Staffing Week e-Newsletter concerning a prominent VMS filing for bankruptcy:

Ensemble Chimes Group (Chimes), a major provider of vendor management services, has ceased operations and filed for bankruptcy. This leaves staffing firms in doubt as to their ability to collect payment for services provided under their VMS agreements.

VMS firms contract with staffing clients to manage the clients’ use of staffing services. VMS firms typically use proprietary software systems to manage timekeeping, payroll, and billing functions of participating staffing firms. Clients pay the VMS firm for the staffing services provided, and the VMS firm in turn pays the staffing firms. Some VMS relationships pose higher risks for staffing firms than others. If VMS firm funds are commingled with client monies, as apparently was the case with Chimes, staffing firms will likely be treated as general creditors—and in some cases, payments made to staffing firms prior to the bankruptcy may have to be returned. Some VMS agreements offer greater protection to staffing firms by placing client funds in secured escrow accounts.

Chimes filed for bankruptcy Jan. 9 under Chapter 7 of the federal bankruptcy law, which means the company is seeking to liquidate its assets rather than reorganize. Chimes’s parent company Axium International Inc., a major supplier of payroll services to the entertainment industry, filed a similar petition Jan. 8.

Chimes’s bankruptcy means its staffing firms must stand in line with other creditors for any outstanding amounts owed under their VMS agreements. Collection may be problematic, because the bankruptcy petition indicates that Chimes has no assets available to pay unsecured creditors.

Another issue is whether clients can now deal with their staffing firms directly to avoid disruption of the clients’ operations and to ensure that temporary employees can continue to work and be paid. This may depend on the terms of the clients’ VMS agreements. Because Chimes has ceased operations and therefore effectively breached its agreement, the bankruptcy trustee may determine that clients are free to deal directly with their staffing firms. Affected staffing firms are urged to consult with their lawyers regarding their rights and obligations.

ASA has retained counsel to provide guidance on the legal issues involved and the steps the staffing industry can take to ensure that the bankruptcy court understands the unique issues relating to VMS agreements and their impact on staffing clients and temporary employees.

Ed Lenz

NOTE from PRN Funding: As VMS’s continue to grow in popularity in the healthcare realm, it’s important to keep this in mind. You could be staffing in hospitals and nursing homes with impeccable credit, but if those facilities are using a VMS, it’s the VMS who will pay you. So if you are considering doing business with a facility who uses a vendor management system, be sure to look into the creditworthiness of the VMS.

We invite you to read a fellow blogger’s post on the subject here: For Whom the Chimes Toll. In his post, Barry Asin mentions writes, “In the short term, there are over 40 large Chimes client organizations that are now in crisis mode as they attempt to sort out who is working on their site, how to get them paid this week and how to make sure they come back next week. Chimes had an estimated $1.6 billion in staffing spend rolling through its system each year, and that suggests somewhere north of 20,000 temps and contractors each week wondering if their next paycheck will be good.”

KLAS Study Reveals MTSO Ratings

Advance for Health Information Professionals gave some details about the recent KLAS study last week.  The study reported on the current trends in the world of medical transcription outsourcing.  I’ve listed a few of the study’s findings in bullet points below:

 

For providers using MTSO, the overall satisfaction scores rose 4.5 points in 2007 from 77.2 to 81.7 out of a possible 100 points.

 

Although many are still not comfortable with the idea of sending medical transcription offshore, the overall perception is improving. Some of the benefits of using medical transcription service organizations were faster turnaround times (TAT), reduced costs and improved quality.

 

Even though the idea of offshore medical transcription is slowly increasing in popularity, the number of provider organizations who reported using them has decreased from 55 percent in 2006 to 38 percent in 2007.

 

The need for medical transcription is increasing due to a) Electronic medical records and the need to populate them quickly, and b) speech recognition services needing editing on the back end, so many MTSOs are increasing their capacity.

 

Pricing is also changing.  The most popular method continues to be charging per line (67 percent of respondents use this method), down from 81 percent in 2006.  Those charging by the Visual Black Character (VBC) has grown from 12 percent in 2006 to 23 percent in 2007.  Overall, the average medical transcription price ranges from 11.9 cents to 13.2 cents per line.

 

Study respondents also listed multiple tips for their fellow providers who are considering outsourced medical transcription, so I condensed those answers as well into a bullet point list:

 

Look into the whole medical transcription package when choosing a vendor.  For example, some MTSOs may charge less to transcribe, but they might require you to do more quality checks upfront.

 

If you are thinking of sending work offshore, be sure to look closely at where the work is being performed and the employment policies and practices that mitigate your risk.

 

Find out how MTs are assigned.

 

Ask the vendor about their support structure and customer service practices.

 

Do some investigative work and see how a medical transcription service communicated with providers in the past to get an idea of how communication with your company will be.

 

Look closely at the types of tools that are available to distribute, track and capture inbounc dictation, work in progress and outbound reports.

 

Understand how charges will be handled.

 

Know how quality standards will be measured and ensured.

 

Click here to read the entire article, Study Reveals Medical Transcription Services Organization Ratings, by Michael K. Smith

 

 

 

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