President’s letter

Mary Radley, RHIA

President 
mary.radley@childrens.harvard.edu

January, 2012

Dear Fellow HIM Professionals,

Happy New Year and best wishes for good health and happiness in 2012. It is hard to believe that my tenure as President is half over already. 2011 has flown by!

The past few months have been very busy for MaHIMA with a variety of meetings and initiatives covering a wide range of topics. There are so many changes and projects in the HIM field and we are working hard to provide networking and education sessions that will help all of us to stay ahead of the curve!

The Fall Meeting on September 23rd had more than 200 registrants, bringing a ‘full house’ to the meeting in Marlboro.
In October, our delegates went to Salt Lake City for the AHIMA House of Delegates session. This is an awesome experience, and I loved every minute!
At the AHIMA convention in October, we were on hand to cheer on our own Linda Hyde, as she was recognized by AHIMA with an Advocacy Award!
October 26th, the Western MA meeting for MaHIMA was hosted at Baystate Medical Center.
On November 9th, the Dot Wagg Memorial Seminar was a full-day meeting, with a packed agenda with great speakers on different aspects of Release of Information.
On November 17th, MaHIMA and MAPAM hosted a joint meeting in Marlboro. This meeting was well-attended and the theme was ‘A True Tossed Salad: Accounting, Budgets, Billing, Coding, & Compliance’.
November 29th, an ICD- 10 Forum was held at New England Sinai. This is a new specialty forum that is starting up and will be focused on training and education plans for the transition to ICD-10.
December 15th – MaHIMA had our first ‘webinar’ meeting which was offered at no cost to members during this first trial using this technology. Luisa DiIeso volunteered her expertise in ICD-10 and provided an excellent training session for members. The registration limit was reached within 48 hours of posting! The feedback on the content for this first webinar was excellent. We will work on fine-tuning the technical setup for these meetings in the future. Stay tuned for additional webinars in the future!
MaHIMA Innovation Awards were announced and five sites were recognized for a variety of projects and accomplishments. The groups will be presenting an overview of their winning projects at the Winter Meeting.
The Manager/Director Forum continues to meet and is facilitated by Jackie Raymond. These meetings provide networking opportunities and the discussion topics are determined by the members of this group. There is no charge to attend these meetings, which are hosted at different member sites throughout the state.
Jeanne Fernandes, Director of Communications, has been working with a group to pilot a new specialty forum for people working in Long Term Care-Post Acute Forum.

SAVE THE DATES! There are many new plans in the works for educational and networking opportunities over the next six months.

MaHIMA Winter Meeting is scheduled for January 27th at Holiday Inn in Woburn
MaHIMA ICD-10 Summit is planned for March 23, 2012
AHIMA Winter Team Talks & Hill Day, scheduled in Washington DC for March 26th & 27th
May 6-8, 2012, New England Annual Meeting at Mohegan Sun. This year, the AHIMA Long Term Care group will be partnering with the 6-states to offer a parallel track of meetings focused on topics pertinent to long-term care.

We have a very aggressive list of goals and plans for providing education and networking opportunities for our members. Please remember that we can always use new volunteers and new ideas! There are several different committees and the work they do is interesting and rewarding. It is also a good way to network with your peers in the HIM profession. Please consider volunteering with MaHIMA!

I am very thankful to work with so many bright and talented people in MaHIMA! My experience during the last two years on the Board has been very rewarding and I whole-heartedly recommend others to get involved. Feel free to contact me anytime at 617-355-5502, or by email at mary.radley@childrens.harvard.edu.

Best Wishes for the New Year!

Mary