Industry Executives Speak out on "Meaningful Use"

On Monday, December 14, MTIA mailed a letter to National Coordinator for Health IT Dr. David Blumenthal on the need for regulators to recognize how the medical transcription sector can help make the federal government’s multi-billion dollar investment in EHRs a fruitful one for physicians, their healthcare teams, and patients. Forty-five industry executives signed the letter speaking to how consistent coding and formatting for all documents entered into the EHR can improve the quality, volume, and flow of information for clinical decision-making and how medical transcriptionists are needed to ensure the accuracy, completeness, and consistency of patient records, regardless of the technology used to capture health information. In addition, the letter called for "meaningful use" regulations to include the ability of EHRs to accept interfaced data from the dictation-transcription process, since it remains the most common method used by physicians to enter care encounter data into the patient record. To read the complete letter, click here.