Credentialing: - Association for Healthcare Documentation

STUDENT SCENE
Attention Students of
ACCP-Approved Schools:
RMT Success Awaits!
CAssie UBer
In late 2008, AHDI’s Credentialing,
Education, and Workforce
Development department performed
an informal data survey of credentialing
exam pass rates. The purpose
of this collection of data was to
record a current pass rate for the
Registered Medical Transcriptionist
(RMT) and Certifi ed Medical
Transcriptionist (CMT) exams. While
cataloging instances of passes and
fails on the RMT exam, the team
reported on additional data that
is collected during the application
process. During the RMT application
process, a candidate completes
a small survey of demographic
information including an indication
of what school from which he or
she graduated. With such a bounty
of information, our team decided
to look not only at pass rates for
the RMT exam, but at the instance
in passing of students of ACCP-
Approved Schools, and conversely,
the instance in passing of students
of non-approved schools. What
we found is that not only does the
probability of passing the RMT exam
increase in exam candidates who
graduated from approved schools
but that the pass rate as compared
to that of graduates of non-approved
schools is far greater than even we
expected.
During our data survey of the
RMT and CMT exams, AHDI went
through 240 RMT candidate applications
that had been submitted
from the beginning of 2007 through
August of 2008. AHDI found that
the RMT exam had an overall pass
rate of 51% (an indication of a valid
entry-level exam, according to the
psychometricians we work with at
our testing center). When narrowed
by educational entity attended, we
found that students of approved
schools passed the RMT exam
about 70% of the time. Staggeringly,
we found that students of nonapproved
schools passed the RMT
only about 33% of the time. While
the Credentialing, Education, and
Workforce Development department
expected to record a comparative
disparity in those numbers, we were
astounded at how large of a gap of
success there actually was and we
began to ponder why.
The Registered Medical
Transcriptionist (RMT) exam was created
to provide employers with the
assurance that successful candidates
were qualifi ed to practice medical
transcription. The RMT exam is
geared toward people who have graduated
from a medical transcription
course and have less than two years
of acute care experience, or transcriptionists
who have practiced solely in
limited specialty settings and do not
voLUME 5 • ISSUE 6 novEMBER 2009
11