In his 1999 State of the Union Address to the United States Congress, President Clinton stated that as part of his Education Accountability Act all schools must end social promotion. We do our children no favors when we allow them to pass from grade to grade without mastering the material. There is no reason to expect that we can institute educational accountability in the lower grades without demanding it in professional circles as well. Recently, I cringed when the attorney who became President of a local business association introduced an important Bay area politician as the most physically responsible member of the Board of Supervisors. Being physically responsible means that you wipe before you flush.
Fiscal responsibility is quite another matter.
If medical transcription service owners must break the unhappy news to aspiring MTs that they cannot be hired because they lack the combination of skills and talent necessary to succeed in the job, then perhaps we should carry the action further up the professional ladder. The settlements of many medical malpractice lawsuits place a gag order on the plaintiffs which effectively allows a physician to keep making the same mistakes. My frustration with doctors who cannot clearly communicate information which must be placed in a patient s medical record is shared by many MTs. One woman, who entered the hospital for minor surgery, asked to see her history and physical as soon as it had been placed in the chart. After reading a boilerplate paragraph of her history that was totally inaccurate, she hit the roof.