Answers at Your Fingertips!

By Bill Algee, BS, RT(R)

Are you looking for a resource to find answers to the questions that your co-workers can’t answer, and you aren’t sure who can? Maybe you have searched all the periodicals and websites you can think of and you are still coming up empty handed. There are no dumb questions – oftentimes someone sitting in an office 500 miles away is thinking or going through the same things you are and they are also just hoping to find an answer. AHRA provides you with an excellent resource to ask your peers all of those questions: the member Forum.

The Forum is a listserver that is available to AHRA members. There is an average of 3500 posts and approximately 700 different threads per month. Posts are created and answered by your peers. Some recent post topics include: ED ultrasounds, CPT code for lung screenings, and MRI slots, to name a few. Responses come from leaders all over the country from a variety of facility sizes. If you need answers quickly this is the place to come.

On more than one occasion I have been in an organizational leadership meeting and we have needed to know how other facilities handled a similar situation to the one we are facing. I have posted my question to the Forum and within minutes received responses from 10 different facilities. Peers in my organization are very jealous of this great asset I have access to so quickly.

The Forum does have some rules, so please make sure you review those before you post. Posting and viewing posts is very easy and can be customized to meet your needs. Accessing the Forum is quick and easy. Viewing the posts and threads can be done in a variety of methods:

1. Access the Forum at ahraonline.org under “Member Resources” and then click on “Login to AHRA Forum.” You will immediately see the latest posts of the day.
2. If you prefer, after you have logged in you can click on “my settings” at the top of the page and have all forum posts sent directly to your email. (You can create a rule and have those emails sent directly to a specific folder if you’re using Outlook.)
3. Under “my settings” you can also have a daily digest sent to your email that is a composite of all of that day’s posts and threads in one document.
4. Posting is very easy. From the email associated with your AHRA account, send your questions or responses to ahra@lists.ahraonline.org, and your posts will appear immediately. Then just wait for the responses to come rolling in!

For your convenience there is also an FAQ section to assist you.

Networking is crucial to the success of the AHRA membership and the Forum is a great place to get started creating new friendships. I have been fortunate enough to develop some great friendships with my peers, and some of us have met in person at RSNA or one of the AHRA meetings to put a name to a face. I hope to see some new names on the Forum very soon. If you need any assistance, please let me know. I would be glad to assist in any way.

Bill Algee, BS, RT(R) is the radiology manager at Columbus Regional Hospital in Columbus, IN. He is a member of the 2014-15 AHRA Board of Director. He can be reached at balgee@crh.org.