An Unprecedented Month of Standards

Developing standards and best practices is a critical objective for any professional association. Beyond advocacy and representation, an industry looks to associations for guidance on a wide array of professional issues. Within the last 30 days, AHDI and MTIA (in collaboration and/or coordination with AHIMA) have published an impressive compendium of professional standards and best practices guides to assist this sector in planning, executing, and managing critical programs around the delivery of healthcare documentation services. Medical transcriptionists, editors, quality assurance coordinators, managers/supervisors, and transcription service organizations should look to these resources when adopting best practices in these areas:

• EBP: Resource Guide for Healthcare Documentation Specialists: This companion guide to the Ethical Best Practices Manual was released this month to provide guidance in HIPAA/regulatory compliance, ethical practices in employment and compensation, and provision of services specifically for the working transcriptionist/editor. This resource manual was a quick sell out at the AHDI annual convention in Austin, so get your copy today!


• Healthcare Documentation Quality Assessment and Management Practices: The culmination of over 3 years’ collaborative effort between AHDI, MTIA and AHIMA, this quality assurance best practices guide has finally been released to guide the healthcare documentation sector as well as healthcare facilities in the establishment and oversight of quality assurance programs that meet the evolving needs of health information management.


• Dictation Best Practices Tool Kit: Developed by AHDI and endorsed by AHIMA, this completely updated tool kit provides resources and training materials for healthcare organizations, transcription service providers, and SRT vendors to use in training healthcare providers toward quality dictation practices and SRT readiness.