ACCIM launches first clinical info certification exams

February 24, 2012 — The American College of Clinical Information Managers (ACCIM) announced today the launch of the nation’s first certification exams for the clinical information management professional.

The ACCIM was established to advance the profession through leadership in advocacy, education, certification, and lifelong learning and has long recognized the need to develop a certification examination that targets clinical information management professionals who are qualified by their training and experience to achieve industry-level certification.

“Medical scribe employment is clearly on the rise and employers require a minimum level of documentation performance and knowledge of the clinical boundaries of scribe utilization. Given the rapid growth of the medical scribe industry, a standardized approach to quality and accurate point-of-care documentation will enable physician workflow efficiencies. These operational improvements as a result of medical scribe use allow the physician to examine additional patients, spend more time at the patient’s bedside, and circumvent the physical barrier imposed by Electronic Medical Records (EMRs) in the physician-patient interview. We believe medical scribe use is cost effective and leads to additional patient safety. In a field as highly regulated as the healthcare industry, it is only a matter of time before medical scribes will need to demonstrate their credentials,” says Kristin Hagen, Executive Director of the ACCIM.

The CIMCAT is a comprehensive certification exam that verifies the medical scribe possesses the skill set of a credentialed Clinical Information Manager (CIM). CIMs must demonstrate fluency in medical terminology, visit level assignment, medicolegal risk mitigation, accountability measures, the Physician Quality Reporting System (PQRS), and in navigating the Electronic Health Record (EHR).

The Health Information Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) course and exam ensures the medical scribe documents the physician-patient medical encounter in a federally compliant manner with respect to the Privacy Rule.

“Helping our graduates achieve industry certification and gain employment is our primary focus,” says Peter Reilly, President and CEO of the American Healthcare Documentation Professionals Group.

“Partnering with the ACCIM in the development and delivery of these certification exams ensures our medical scribe training program will culminate in industry certification for our graduates just like our medical transcription editing training and medical billing and coding training programs currently do.”

To learn more about the CIMCAT certification exam and other ACCIM exams, visit http://www.theaccim.org.