Manual of ethical best practices for healthcare documentation businesses now available

Heightened privacy and security concerns, increased calls for transparency of operations, and a growing home-based workforce have prompted The Association for Healthcare Documentation Integrity (AHDI) and The Medical Transcription Industry Association (MTIA) to create their Manual of Ethical Best Practices for the Healthcare Documentation Sector. The manual will help healthcare documentation/medical transcription businesses and professionals to adopt policies and procedures for complying with HIPAA privacy and security laws and operating in a manner consistent with ethical best practices related to transcription billing, compensation, and outsourcing. The manual is part of the associations’ ongoing commitment to safeguarding protected health information and upholding the integrity of the profession and industry.

“For many, this will require a sea change in attitudes about legal and regulatory compliance. Healthcare reform as well as federal and state initiatives to eliminate fraud will only underscore the need for compliance.”

“With the emerging demand from healthcare delivery for increased standardization and greater specificity around exchange of health information, the time is ripe for the healthcare documentation sector to look closely at its compliance practices to ensure that the sector is best positioned to respond to the future needs of health care,” states AHDI/MTIA CEO Peter Preziosi, PhD, CAE. “We want to be a resource for business owners and healthcare documentation professionals in developing policies, procedures, and contracts that reflect high-integrity business practices and promote transparency around key issues that reflect well on the industry as a whole.”

To be just such a resource, the associations convened an advisory council composed of industry content and practice experts, i.e., transcription professionals, managers, quality assurance coordinators, educators, and medical transcription service owners and executives, to provide input regarding areas that could benefit from the creation of ethical best practices and to assist in content development for the manual. Council participants recognize that a set of ethical best practices is a necessity at this time of greater regulation, scrutiny, and enforcement by the federal government.

“The medical transcription/healthcare documentation industry is entering a new age of regulation with the increased emphasis on data privacy and security by consumers, the healthcare industry and the government combined with the trend towards increased governmental scrutiny of healthcare vendors,” says Scott Edelstein, Esq., a partner in the health law practice of Squire, Sanders & Dempsey L.L.P. “For many, this will require a sea change in attitudes about legal and regulatory compliance. Healthcare reform as well as federal and state initiatives to eliminate fraud will only underscore the need for compliance.”

While the entire manual will be officially launched at the MTIA Annual Conference in Daytona Beach, Florida, on Saturday, May 1, the first set of manual documents, including sample HIPAA policies and procedures and sample business associate agreement, are already available for purchase to help healthcare documentation businesses and professionals meet their current regulatory obligations as soon as possible.