As many of you know, last week was a bit of a crazy one for me. In trying to do an upgrade to the HIPAA4MT website, I ran into some problems that delayed the start of the HIPAA Training Courses. Technology is a wonderful thing, until it doesn’t work right! Fortunately, everyone was quite patient with me (Thank you, all!) and yesterday the courses were up and going!

I thought today it would be interesting to share with you some of what I am seeing across the internet related to our industry. There is so much going on and sometimes it’s just hard to stay up on all of it. I have been intending to make Friday the day that I wrap up the things I’ve seen throughout the week, so we’ll do this today and see if you like it. If you enjoy seeing these things, then I’ll work on making that a normal part of our week.

Mergers Everywhere!

It’s no secret that we have a lot of mergers and acquisitions in the medical transcription industry. Every week we seem to hear about another company being purchased, or two more companies merging together. I’ve been a part of a few of those in my time in the industry. They aren’t always fun to go through as you find, particularly if you are with the company being acquired, that the corporate culture can change overnight. For the MTs involved, it can be a scary thing. For The Record Magazine just did an article titled “The Effects of the Medquist/Spheris Merger” that is interesting. You can see what thoughts are being shared in our industry about how the merger of these two companies will impact our industry.

Speech Recognition Technology and Saving Money

I was interested in this article, in Advance, where it talked about one million dollars being saved so far this year with the use of SRT. The article is titled “Voices: Speech Recognition in the HIM World” and you might find the comments section interesting as well. While this is a blog post on the Advance site, it’s almost a copy and paste of a press release done by Nuance, an SRT company. The SRT companies are definitely getting into the blogging and online world. M-Modal has also created a blog that is run by some of the MTs using their system. While they do report some interesting information about how learning to use the keyboard and not the mouse increases productivity, nothing in their reports addresses the increase in productivity from transcription to SRT, nor do any of these posts talk about whether the MT compensation changed as a result. For me, somewhere I’d like to see more full disclosure on those two topics.

Americans with Recovery Act Helping Globalization?

While we in the US are struggling with economy, it’s interesting to see the rest of our industry’s take on what might be happening with the stimulus bills we see passing. While this is not meant to be a political discussion at all, I think reading the projections from the Philippines provides a view into how some of the rest of world looks at our industry and the opportunities that are available.

For Bloggers Everywhere!

As I started working with websites this year, I’ve found myself immersed into an entirely different world from medical transcription. With that, of course, each profession has its own industry conventions and meetings. I’m still torn on whether I will get to attend Blog World Expo this year, but thought I’d share it here for any of you who also have blogs or websites. The fact that it is in Las Vegas makes it a draw for me, of course! :) Still, it appears it will be packed with information and I just might get to meet some of those gurus who are teaching me things about how to run a business online.

Medical Transcription Humor

We can all use a good chuckle during our day. This blog, done by our very own Carol James, always makes me smile. Carol’s writing style is awesome, and she has previously been a guest poster here on MT Tools. In this particular post, Carol makes the statement “I assure you I’m normal.” Medical transcriptionists will enjoy this one so do be sure you pay Carol a visit!

Over to You!

And now it’s over to you! Is gathering this kind of thing interesting? Do you want to see more? Give a shout here in the comment section and let me hear your thoughts!