Meeting & Agendas

Norma Mercado welcomed the Advisory Board Members. Members present at the meeting greeted and introduced themselves. Norma Mercado reminded the board members that in the future the board would be meeting once a year.

Members reviewed minutes from October 3, 2014 meeting. Nan Walter motioned to accept minutes as written and Sharon Moody second the motion. The members unanimously voted to accept the minutes as written.

A. Annual Program Assessment Reports 1. Norma Mercado reported current enrollment in both the Associate Degree program and Medical Coding Certificate degree program. Presently there are 53 students enrolled in the Associate program and 20 students enrolled in the Medical Coding Certificate program. 2. Norma Mercado reported the current staffing number for the HITT program. Presently, the staffing level consists of 2 full time faculty and 3 adjuncts. 3. Norma Mercado stated that there are staffing needs, more clinical placements and money to attend Assembly on Education conference and training. At present, faculty is allotted $175.00 to attend conferences. Nan Walters explained how the money is divided between the faculties of the health sciences programs. Norma Mercado stated that next year she plans to go to the Assembly of Education convention and may have to pay for it herself. 4. Norma Mercado reported that there have been 18 program graduates from the associate degree program. 5. Norma Mercado stated that from the number of graduate students who have graduated, there are 7 who are not working in the field by their own choice. HITT students who have graduated are currently placed at: Healthcare Setting-11 Non-Health Care Setting-7 6. Norma Mercado announced that by February 2016 she would be sending out Graduate Satisfaction surveys. 7. Norma stated that she sent out Employer Satisfaction surveys and had no returns. She reported that she send out 11 surveys by mail. She stated that she will have to do something different next time when she sends them. 8. Norma Mercado explained the certification outcomes. There have been 4 attempts from the HITT students. Of those attempts, 3 passed on the 1st attempt. Norma also reported that the National average score is 72% and ACC’s average score is 75%. B. Curriculum Updates 1. Norma Mercado reported the new course hours which began fall 2015 is now 60 hours for the Associate degree program. 2. Norma Mercado announced that effective fall 2015 the Medical Coding Certificate has been discontinued. Norma said she had discontinued the program because students wanted an associate degree. 3. Norma Mercado also announced that the Medical Coding teach out will be in effect until August 31, 2018. Norma stated that students in certificate program can still get jobs. C. Discipline Assessment Cycle-Peer Review Form The Discipline Assessment Cycle (DAC) report was presented to the Advisory Board members for review by Norma Mercado. Norma Mercado and the advisory board members reviewed the report and had discussion regarding the finding from the report. Cynthia Colovas suggested that as a project, the program should look at the feasibility to have a review course to encourage students to test immediately after graduation.

Norma Mercado said that she needed more clinical placements for the students. She reached out to the advisory board members and asked if they may know or have referrals that she could contact. Cynthia Colovas said she would be happy to have students come to her work place for a day. Norma said she would call her. Norma Mercado announced that the clinical courses were changing. HITT 1160 would remain the same. HITT 1260 was changing to HITT 1161 with 96 clinical hours and HITT 2360 was changing to HITT 2260, with more in house simulation. Norma Mercado said that in this course, she planned to do management projects in house.

Nan Walter announced that the Health Science Department was having an open house on January 30th. She invited the members to attend. There being no further business to discuss, the meeting was adjourned by Cynthia Colovas.