HBMA: The Last 10 Years By Sherri Dumford Director of External Affairs, ISAM that old saying, “time sure flies when you are having fun!” certainly applies to the last ten years at hbma. it has been a period of great growth, fantastic development, and many exciting initiatives as the leadership of hbma has guided us to where we are today. as i review the many accomplishments that have occurred during the last decade, i wanted to highlight a few of the significant developments that are the direct result of dozens of volunteers and hundreds of volunteer and management team man-hours. one of the first areas of development that comes to mind is the development of a network of regulatory and legislative relationship forums to promote the interests of medical billing and to advocate on behalf of hbma members. it is important to point out that this network was not something that was created overnight. it was a long, slow process that developed over many years of knocking on doors, presenting a true picture of the challenges facing our industry, striving to create genuine credibility, and being willing to serve as a resource. now, this network has learned to turn to us when looking for a credible revenue cycle resource. We would be remiss if we did not thank bill finerfrock of capitol associates, who supported and continues to guide the association along this path. We have spent countless hours developing resources that go beyond the traditional “third party” medical billing professionals, which have caused us to grow and provide value for the billing managers in both large and small practices. most recently, we have developed an academic membership category to serve those just entering the business. did your mother ever tell you to know and be kind to your neighbor? Well, we at hbma have worked hard to know and be kind to our neighbors in this industry. We have developed many strong relationships with the leaders of related not-for-profit associations that face the same challenges as an association that we do. a few among those relationships are aafP, aaPc, aca, acmcs, ahima, ahiP, ahra, ama, acr, caQh & core, cooperative exchange, hfma, hcca, himss, mbP, mgma, rbma, and Wedi. i think we might have the alphabet covered here. the reason this is so important is because there is strength in numbers and being able to comfortably collaborate and work together on issues facing our industry is imperative. among this group are the committee on operating rules for information exchange (core), the organization charged with developing the operating 12 hbma billing • march.aPril.2013 rules and elements of electronic claims processing, and the Workgroup for electronic data interchange (Wedi). We are happy to be in a position to collaborate with these organizations to ensure meaningful representation from the professional component side of the house. in a world where technology advancement continues at unprecedented speed, so goes the business of medical billing. hbma has created ongoing meaningful education and forums to address the emerging technology that impacts our revenue cycles, and the association will continue to create relevant education to provide the roadmaps for your business to stay preeminent in these shifting business models. the education on demand that you see available today evolved from the first webinar program presented from a “mock studio” set up at a hotel some ten years ago. the advancement in the technology allows us to produce these programs at more frequent intervals and at a much less expensive cost! Where we have succeeded in government relations, we have also forged ahead in the commercial payor community. over the last ten years – and in particular, the last three or four – hbma has made great strides in developing relationships with the major commercial payors, focusing on administrative simplification. We have ongoing, regularly scheduled calls with several of the major payors and have created a web tool that is available to members to report significant issues regarding 5010, icd-10, provider enrollment, and other topics. many other things come to mind, like the first annual report in 2007, our contributions to charitable organizations, the launching of a technology tool allowing our committees to manage communication and serve as a document repository, the development of a newsletter tool for members and the employer Pages, affinity programs, the building of a strong regional and state community, the first “hill” day that our members experienced on capitol hill last fall, the launching of many surveys, special edition publications, the Weekly digest, a more robust certification program, an annual cms day, and the list goes on. We have over a dozen standing committees and 150 active volunteers who contribute to the success of hbma. as i said above, “Wow, time flies when you are having fun!” and we have had a lot of fun building and developing hbma over the past ten years. and now, as we face some of the biggest challenges and changes our industry has seen, hbma leadership will continue to navigate the association through those waters. the organization deeply depends upon volunteers, so if you can make the time to give back to an organization that gives so much, and you want to have fun in the process, consider volunteering – the next ten years will fly by just as fast.
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