ACDIS Introductions: Member Services Specialist Penny Richards

Hello! I’m Penny Richards the new ACDIS Member Services Specialist. I’m thrilled to be working with ACDIS Director Brian Murphy and Associate Director Melissa Varnavas in this very exciting and growing segment of the healthcare industry.

In this role, I will be your primary contact for membership questions.  Among my responsibilities are managing the certification and recertification processes, spot auditing applications (be sure you have all your back up paperwork and continue education certificates), maintaining certification lists, processing delivery of certificates and pins, answering the growing number of employer inquiries about certification verification… and on and on.

I’ll be writing for the ACDIS Blog, posting to Facebook and hopefully bringing ACDIS to Twitter in the near future. I am certainly going to be busy!

I joined HCPro in 2000, in the editorial department writing newsletters dedicated to the outpatient and ambulatory center arenas.  In 2002 I transferred to the marketing department and worked to help get the word out about all the great products HCPro created for health information management and revenue cycle professionals. And I was there when ACDIS launched and wrote almost every piece of ACDIS marketing you may have received in your e-mail or snail-mail box.

Now, I’m back in editorial and thrilled to be a member of the ACDIS team.

What more can I tell you about myself?  Before coming to HCPro, I spent 10 years as a mild mannered reporter for a great metropolitan newspaper doing local and features reporting and won a New England Press Association Award for history reporting in 2000. I published a book about my “sally” with breast cancer in 2007, and write two personal blogs.

I’m an independent voter, first-born who has trouble saying “No”, and would run away with the James Bond-era Sean Connery (my husband of 36 years is very patient with this statement). I am very fond of dirty vodka martinis and will clean the kitchen if you’ll cook.

I’m a Justice of the Peace in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts (many states allow a one-day-one-marriage license, so I can perform weddings out of state… give me a call!) as well as a Notary Public and a hospice volunteer. I stay busy but not so much that I can’t sneak away to Maine for occasional “Attitude Adjustment Days.”

Please drop me a line if I can be of assistance. I’m excited to be a member of the ACDIS team and look forward to working with you!