MTIA changing its name

I’ve just learned that the Medical Transcription Industry Association will be changing its name to the Clinical Documentation Industry Association. This change reflects the fact that the transcription profession is evolving into an editing function with the advent of EMRs.

The new name and expanded organizational mission will be introduced Feb. 21 at the HIMSS conference. The CDIA will focus on the human interaction necessary to make electronic documentation more usable, a process likely to grow more complicated as the healthcare industry migrates to ICD-10 coding.

The cynic in me knows that the public (or mainstream media) won’t notice much of a difference because there’s still the widespread perception that medical transcription is a booming industry. All those “work at home transcribing medical records” offers can’t possibly be misleading, could they?

I guess it’s up to those of us who really understand healthcare to spread the word that transcription is dying and that the real growth potential is in higher-skilled editing of clinical documentation.