Meg Trumpp receives the 2011 Outstanding Affiliate Contributor Award at this year’s AARC Convention


A project called Adopt-a-Company will bring respiratory therapists in contact with local businesses to help them understand how COPD affects their work force and what they can do to make a difference.
Begin now by identifying a company in your local area. You adopt them and give them health information, schedule an on-site screening this fall, and provide them with important information that will help bring a focus on COPD to their wellness programs and health risk assessments
Visit the AARC website to find out more
Join the DRIVE4COPD campaign and make a difference
Click here to review are new Bylaws
Letter From Bill Dubbs "Refining Time Standards
It was good to see many of you in Vail recently. While there I updated the House of Delegates on several important items. One of the most important is the update of the AARC Uniform Reporting Manual which is presently in process and will conclude in late 2011 or early 2012. In light of the intensifying use of industry consultants hired to improve profitability, the availability of productivity tools that accurately measure workload intensity to managers is vital. These tools use time standards based on relative value units and can accurately determine appropriate staffing levels, assist in budgeting and serve as the foundation of benchmarking. The AARC needs the assistance of the state societies to help make sure the time standards reported in the 2010 AARC Uniform Reporting Manual are rock solid and unassailable. This can happen if managers of respiratory care services have developed solid time standards and contribute that information via the surveys that will be conducted this fall.
Free AARC Resources for Developing or Refining Time Standards
In anticipation of the surveys to come, now is the time for managers to review or develop time standards for services. To assist them the AARC is providing a new resource center on its website. This Productivity and Time Standards Resources center contains 3 concise documents:
"Productivity Systems-The Importance of Accurate Time Standards"- This document explains the commonly used productivity systems and metrics used to support staffing decisions. It explains why metrics used commonly by consultants cannot accurately define staffing levels required for respiratory therapy services and provides rationale for a system based on relative value units.
"Developing Time Standards-Collecting Data"- This document provides a step-by step approach to gathering the data required to develop time standards. It also contains discussion on the importance of getting buy in from administration in development and adoption of time standards.
"Statistical Methodology For Developing Time Standards" This reference document provides basic statistical information to assist in developing valid time standards from the collected data.
These resources will hopefully encourage managers who currently have time standards to selectively evaluate the need for updating them. We also suspect that since we have not previously asked the managers of non-invasive cardiology, sleep laboratory services, hyperbaric medicine and pulmonary rehabilitation services to report time standards they may have not yet developed them and will find these resources useful. You may download these documents at: http://www.aarc.org/resources/standards_development/
Please Share These Resources
Please use all communication channels available within your state to make your colleagues responsible for hospital inpatient services, non-invasive cardiology, sleep, pulmonary function testing and blood gas laboratories, wound care and HBO centers, and pulmonary rehabilitation services aware of the availability of these free resources.
Please consider using your state society website, any internet networking communities, local communities of special interest to managers within your state. We want to get this information to all managers regardless of their AARC membership status. You will find a Productivity and Time Standards Button for your website at http://www.aarc.org/affiliate_web_design/ Please help us by seeing that this button appears on your state society website homepage as soon as possible.
If you have any questions please do not hesitate to contact Bill Dubbs dubbs@aarc.org


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