Not to make light of pt privacy, but

• Post below about transcribing at Starbucks is why - no one respects MTs
  • I'd never transcribe at Starbucks!!!!! - MT
  • Please, I transcribe from a lounge chair at the pool during the summer. - CamMT
    • I hope your PC falls into the pool...nm - ****
      • Don't hate! - Grow Up! You sound like a 2 year old. NM
    • You are a joke! Are you for real? I bet you don't even know what MTing is!...nm - ****
      • If it means chained to a desk, I guess a lot of us don't know. - MTTwo
        • Oh, yeah, and don't forget the catheter with those - chains to the desk and...
        • Why doesn't she take the PC into the pool , that might also work...nm - ****
          • A laptop, wireless router or a card from say Sprint, good battery - headphones, footpedal (?)
          • You're sounding bitter about your cubicle. - MTTwo
          • Great idea! - Grow Up! You sound like a 2 year old. NM
    • Nothing to do with needing silence - anon
      • No one really cares what your typing. - sm
  • Why not? - who cares if we transcribe
    • the profession is not respected because - dnh
      • Define professional - MTTwo
        • like someone above said.. - dnh
          • Not to make light of pt privacy, but - MTTwo
        • Exactly... - sm
      • What? - sm
      • Thank you for the - voice of reason - nm

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Its is all getting so frightening, the invasion by companies into peoples lives.  I have worked at nine hospitals, two trans companies on-site, three trans companies at home and never have I had a background check OR drug screen.  The policy for drug screening at the hospitals was if you seemed like you were under the influence your boss could request a drug screen but never happened to ME or any of my coworkers.  Physical exam, sure I got those when I worked at the hospitals but they paid for the physical exam and they also covered me for insurance.  The trans company I work for now does not provide medical coverage or life insurance coverage for statutory employees, so I dont see why they would be concerned about my health status.  Lets face it, they are concerned with how much we can pound away each day and that is it.  We get paid for what we produce.  So under these circumstances, they dont need to be poking their nose IN my background, my urine or my physical body.  If it is checking on my experience, well they already did that by talking to previous employers and coworkers and guess I passed the test, as I was hired.

it only cost $2/month extra - today I think it costs $19.95 but to me it's worth it because #1 it cuts all telemarketer calls (and I have been on the Do Not Call list since that began) and I can also take my phone charges off my MTSO business at tax time......

call your phone company and ask them if they offer anything like Privacy Director.  *S* 

I do occasional IC work for a provider that I have known a while now. Today i did some work for her and found something that really bothers me. The physician dictates the patient's full name, street address and home phone number in addition to her DOB. Is that HIPPA compliant? I'm sorry folks but I really don't want my street address and phone number available across the internet even if it is "so called" secure. I would like your thoughts.

...requires a covered entity to make "reasonable efforts to limit use, disclosure of, and requests for PHI to the minimum necessary to accomplish the intended purpose."  The only AHA-approved HIPAA training program, HIPAA Academy, specifically states in its training materials that HIPAA intends that personal information be limited to document headers unless absolutely required   I will quote page 4-56:

"In practice, we expect the minimum-necessary requirement to lead to compartmentalization of the medical record so that one portion of the record (the body of the report) may be readily disclosed for one purpose without compromising the privacy of the entire record."

By limiting PHI to headers, reports can easily be redacted of personal information; when the PHI is scattered throughout the reports, this information cannot be redacted.

the healthcare provider , i.e. the doc, establishes the standards for protecting privacy of records. You (or your service) is the Business Associate who COMPLIES with whatever standards the doctor sets. Some docs send files by email, some want encryption. Hospitals, obviously, generally do more locking down on their stuff, as they are more open to lawsuits. All YOU have to do to be HIPAA compliant is to COMPLY witih the standards the doc sets. It is not up to you to set them. Also what you and everyone else forgets about HIPAA is it is a two part process. Not only does the patient's medical records have to be disclosed BUT the patient must also suffer a loss because of the disclosure. So even if your doc stands out on the street and tells passers-by about Mrs. So and So and her athlete's foot, unless she incurs a loss from that, it's not a HIPAA violation. Remember this whole thing came about because a pharmacy tech went home and told her high school son that another classmate's father was coming in for HIV drugs...get the picture? Something private was disclosed inappropriately and that's how the girl found out her father was HIV positive.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/05/15/octuplet.mom.hospital/index.html

LOS ANGELES, California (CNN) -- The hospital where a California woman gave birth to octuplets in January has been fined $250,000 by the state because nearly two dozen medical workers, including doctors, illegally viewed her medical records, according to state health officials.

Nadya Suleman was the subject of controversy after giving birth to octuplets in January.

Kaiser Permanente's Bellflower hospital, where Nadya Suleman's eight babies were born, revealed in March that 15 employees lost their jobs and eight others were disciplined for improperly accessing her computerized medical records.

There was no evidence that information from the medical files was leaked to the news media, which has intensely covered Suleman's story, according to Kathleen Billingsley, deputy director of the California Public Health Department's Center for Health Care Quality.

Six of the privacy breaches happened at other Kaiser Permanente facilities, which are linked into the same computer system housing medical records.

Suleman -- already a single mother with six children -- gave birth to octuplets conceived through in vitro fertilization, fueling controversy. News of her collecting public assistance for some of her children outraged many taxpayers.

nm

Link to the Bureau of Labor Statistics information on our dwindling profession.  According to them, employment prospects are good for MTs, with many opportunities for advancement.  I think they must be a little out of the loop on what VR and offshoring are doing to us....

http://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos271.htm 

I've been with this large clinic acct. since March of 2004. Since starting, they've been growing & going through lots of changes in the way they're running things. I am a part-time IC. I've gotten great audit scores and have been told I'm one of their best MTs on the account (when wanting to switch to doing more on a different acct.)

When I first started, all the work was in a pool. Sometime later, I noticed they were pretty much assigning only certain clinics to me, which they confirmed they'd starting doing it that way & it improved production. All the MTs seemed to be pleased with this. I had mostly decent dictators overall.

Not too long ago, I noticed I'd started getting overall worse dictators. When I asked my supervisor about it, via email, she said nothing had changed, I was just getting the luck of the draw. I had my suspicions that some of those in higher positions that could manipulate the work were giving themselves the good jobs, & even voiced something to that effect--slightly. But, I did notice after I'd tentatively voiced my suspicions, I started to get some of my better dictators back.

However, last week I noticed a drastic & complete change. I started getting some of the worse dictators from clinics I usually didn't work on--not some of the good dictators from that clinic, mind you, but the worse ones almost consistently. My suspicions were confirmed a few days ago by a broad email sent to us all that there had been some work-pool changes. In effect, it was saying those of us who weren't doing well by their criteria, i.e, QA utilization, production, audit scores, accountability & quality, were not going to be getting work when it was available, but it would go to the ones who meet all this criteria, and that basically we were going to be getting the junk, to paraphrase.  Since work usually doesn't download until later in the morning, they were going to save any morning work for the "good" MTs.

Now, I know that I am meeting all those criteria, and I am so upset by the fact I'm getting all the junk now. From reading this board, I'd thought I'd learned that companies will give full-time employees the better work instead of the ICs, that this somehow is better for the company. Could anyone advise me of this? Could there be another reason for this that mgmt doesn't want to tell us, other than trying to attack our work & say it's our fault?

other billing entity. This is not a paycheck, it's payment for an invoice. Terrible thing that you're not getting your money, but it's not like she skipped "paydays" here.

I feel sorry for you. I just got a check I espected much earlier. Sure makes it hard to do business, doesn't it?

I literally lost it, turned the speaker up for my kids and they were losing it along with the doc.  He always refers to vitals, meds etc "as listed on the nurses chart".  He seemed a bit distracted tonight, usually a fantastic dictator, the ones we love that we just know exactly what they're going to say next?

So he says..."Vitals as I noted on the nurses chest".  He only caught himself after some of those nurses burst out laughing and told him what he had just said....the rest of the report was a mix of med terminology and the comedy club!

Our house here was icky when we first moved in.  Each room was a different color of pastel.  The mottled blue/gray/white/brown carpet was nasty because they had cats and dogs that evidently must have been locked in the bedrooms while the adults went to work.  The living room and hallway were blue-gray, the kitchen was yellow, laundry room peach, bathroom pink, and the bedrooms were lavendar, purple, and fuchsia.  Of course, the walls matched the carpet that matched the curtains.  Blechy.  We painted everything just a plain off white before we moved in.

My parents never deviated from plain white walls when I was growing up.  I'm just now learning to go wild with decorating.  In fact, we just got the funds to do our addition today, so we're adding another bedroom, an office for me, and a second bathroom, and enlarging the kitchen and utility rooms.  Fun, fun, fun, more household disruption for the next several months.  I just can't wait for the end result.

Hey y'all.   I have a little black box of a C-Phone, from C.H.A.R.T.S. and it is called  D-Light.  

Yesterday it would not dial.  Everything else works apparently, the green light is on and it changes from green to red when I hit the buttons to dial or hit the foot pedal.

But, the DIAL TONE is lower volume than normal and it will not dial.  The buttons do nothing.  I do get the phone company prompt "If you are trying to make a call, please hang up..." if I stay on the line long enough.

It is acting like it is not getting power, this is how it acts when the power cord is not plugged in.  But, it is plugged in.  I think the machine could work, I just don't know what is going wrong. 

Please help if you know what is going wrong.  TX so much-- I gotta work!! 

Christmas.  I suffer from SAD too.  It is by Light America and is called sunlight lamp.  It has a rectangular head that you can adjust the position on.   I have noticed a difference in how I feel since I started using it. 

I wish I could adjust the brightness on it, but I just turn it where it faces the wall when I want it dimmer. 

It sits on top of my desk hutch.  It isn't anything special to look at, I think it was around $20.