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This is in response to the article "One Way or Another" (April 2009). This article infuriated me, and I feel compelled to respond. For the record, I am totally against mandatory credentialing and licensing. Let me count the ways!
For starters: Has no one heard? We're in a recession people, possibly a depression. Lots of people laid off, losing their jobs, having difficulty paying their bills, even losing their homes. Not to mention MTs' wages going down, down, down for a number of years now.
The owner of the small company for which I've worked for more than 12 years has always made a point of paying better than the national average. However, since several years ago, our production has been counted by character count rather than line-for-line, which is about a 30 percent pay cut. I don't blame the "boss." (Technically, I'm an independent contractor.) There are various pressures on him that forced him to that decision, and no one has unlimited funds.
However, with that said, personally I'm still reeling from that pay cut, as none of my bills went down in the slightest. I had to borrow like crazy just to keep eating; and frankly, the last several years have been sheer financial hell.
Your article mentions that licensing fees in Pennsylvania would amount to $2,105 per license every 2 years, which -- if the Association for Healthcare Documentation Integrity's (AHDI) scheme for mandatory everything comes true -- would be on top of what they are planning to charge for their credentials, which they hope become mandatory.
There's a question to be asked in the middle of all this: "Cui bono?" It means "Who benefits?"
From where I stand, I have to say it looks like MTs will definitely NOT be benefiting under this scheme. I'm already burdened with more bills than I can handle, and I'm attempting to deal with them on 30 percent less money than I was making a few years ago.
How in the world am I going to deal with forking over hundreds of dollars to AHDI and thousands of dollars to a new state licensing bureaucracy? And who said they deserve even $1 of my hard-earned wages? For what? And why?
As far as I can tell, the only people to benefit from this outrageous scheme would be AHDI and the various new state bureaucracies, all of whom will then have control over my work and the power to tell me whether or not I can work in this field. They'll all be getting nice salaries without themselves having to transcribe a single line of dictation. It sure as heck will NOT benefit me, nor will it benefit any of the MTs out there I've known over the years.
I've been doing this work for more than 20 years. I learned on the job -- I had to take tests and compete to earn my first trainee MT job at a major Southern California teaching hospital. And I continue to learn something new every night on the job, which is one of the things I have always liked, in spite of the lousy dictators we have to deal with.
Just because I don't have credentials or a degree doesn't mean I'm inferior to someone who forked over big bucks for a course. My significant other took a course from one of the major online schools, and now has about 2-3 years of job experience in this field. But he still asks me questions about what he's hearing, and not the other way around.
Not to mention that there will also be a burden on many of the medical transcription service organizations (MTSOs) out there, who will then have to do more unpaid work in the form of keeping track of who has "permission" to work for them and who does not.
Does anybody care that this scheme will throw people out of work, either through denying people like me the right to contract for work on my own, or through putting small MTSOs out of business?
In the midst of all the self-congratulation going on at AHDI, has anyone heard of the term "unintended consequences?"
Hello? Bueller? Did anyone take any kind of a course resembling Economics 101? In an economy that is frankly tanking in many sectors, why make it more difficult for people to support themselves?
If AHDI gets total control over this occupation, I am 100 percent sure I will not be the only person to regret it.
Pamela B. Maltzman
Lancaster, CA
Via e-mail
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