AUSTIN, Texas, Aug. 6 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- 2010 AHDI
Conference -- MedQuist Inc. (Nasdaq: MEDQ), a leading provider of
technology-enabled clinical documentation services, continues to
support industry best practices for quality standards and metrics.
Together with the American Health Information Management
Association (AHIMA), the Association for Healthcare Documentation
Integrity (AHDI), the Medical Transcription Industry Association
(MTIA) and other industry quality leaders, MedQuist contributed to
the new Healthcare Documentation Quality Assessment and
Management Best Practices just unveiled at the AHDI 32nd
Annual Convention and Expo.
This new set of industry standards clearly spells out how to
define errors in clinical documentation, to ensure quality and
consistency of records for various purposes including automated
decision support, research, and core measure outcomes.
According to DeeAnn Logan,
MedQuist vice president of Quality, MedQuist was an active and
collaborative participant with AHDI, MTIA and AHIMA in the
standards development process. "We were pleased to be able to
represent our customers' experience in the discussion of process
improvement for the entire industry," she states. "With a
simple, straightforward, readily adoptable methodology in place,
customers of all Medical Transcription Service Organizations
(MTSOs) can now have confidence that their providers are on the
same page when they define quality scores as being at or above
98."
Among the other advantages to the new standards, Logan
cites:
- Having an industry standard measurement policy will, for the
first time, allow for an apples-to-apples comparison among
MTSOs.
- Detailed error definitions by category are provided, to
minimize subjectivity.
- The new methodology has a stronger focus on critical
errors; i.e., ensuring that all audited reports that contain a
Patient Safety/Critical error will fail the job.
- For the first time, best practices for blanks are outlined.
(Previous methods did not address these.)
- The policy provides recommendations for roles and
responsibilities of all stakeholders involved in the creation of
medical records.
Logan notes, "MedQuist is committed to delivery of the highest
level of quality patient care documentation to our customers. We
believe we have the right blend of process, roles, resources,
training and technology -- including automated quality checks,
alerts and monitoring of transcription jobs throughout the workflow
(both pre- and post-delivery) -- to achieve this goal. We
have already implemented more accurate, real-time, immediate
feedback to our medical transcriptionists, for proactive,
continuous quality improvement and learning. With all of this
in place, we anticipate quick adoption of the new standards,
especially since we previously implemented the 2007 AHDI Quality
Standards."
About MedQuist
MedQuist is a leading provider of medical transcription
services, and a leader in technology-enabled clinical
documentation workflow. MedQuist's enterprise solutions –
including mobile voice capture devices, speech recognition,
Web-based workflow platforms, and global network of medical editors
– help healthcare facilities improve patient care, increase
physician satisfaction, and lower operational costs. For more
information, please visit www.medquist.com.
"Safe Harbor" Statement under the U.S. Private Securities
Litigation Reform Act of 1995: Statements in this press release
regarding MedQuist's business that are not historical facts are
"forward-looking statements" that involve risks and uncertainties.
Actual outcomes and results may differ materially from what is
expressed or forecasted in forward-looking statements. As a result,
forward-looking statements speak only as of the date they were
made, and the Company undertakes no obligation to publicly update
or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of
new information, future events or otherwise.
SOURCE MedQuist Inc.
Copyright g. 6 PR Newswire
