AHIMA AND MTIA RECOMMEND ADOPTION OF VBC AS STANDARD MEASURE FOR MEDICAL TRANSCRIPTION

CHICAGO, February 22—The American Health Information Management Association (AHIMA) and the Medical Transcription Industry Association (MTIA) Joint Task Force on Standards Development recommends the adoption of visible black character (VBC) by all organizations producing medical transcription, including those using in-house staff to transcribe dictation. VBC is the total number of characters that can only be seen with the naked eye.

The need for a standard measure for medical transcription of patient medical records has become ever more apparent. A standard measure adopted by the industry and universally applied will result in various benefits, including:

1. Support of health information management (HIM) departments in establishing and maintaining service level agreements with medical transcription service organizations (MTSOs).
2. Improved ability to benchmark transcription performed in-house through a standard measurement.
3. Better business relationships between healthcare organizations and medical transcription service organizations (MTSOs): Hospitals, physician practices, and clinics commonly outsource their transcription to MTSOs, which typically charge for services on a per-unit basis.
4. Improved tools for evaluating and selecting transcription service providers.

Recognizing that the transcription field now employs a number of measurement standards, the task force sought first to identify and categorize those standards most often used, then conducted a comparative evaluation. The issues related to adoption of a standard measurement methodology were explored from both the vendor and healthcare entity perspectives. “Ultimately we found VBC to be the only counting method that can be easily understood, verified, and replicated by all parties in the medical transcription business process,” said David Woodrow, co-chair of the joint task force and MTIA board member.

The success of this industry standard will be largely dependent upon cost, ease of use, acceptance in the business culture, and availability of information technology expertise. To determine the existence of these key characteristics in the current environment, the task force conducted a survey of leading transcription software vendors and medical transcription service organizations.

“The findings of the survey revealed a universal ability to measure transcription productivity using VBC,” Wendy M. Mangin, MS, RHIA, co-chair of the taskforce and AHIMA’s president-elect said, adding “The survey also indicated that VBC was widely accepted as the departmental standard for benchmarking and the preferred unit of measure for all customer invoicing.”

The white paper, “A Standard Unit of Measure for Transcribed Reports,” can be found on AHIMA’s Web site at http://library.ahima.org/xpedio/groups/public/documents/ahima/bok1_033557.html.

ABOUT AHIMA
AHIMA is the premier association of health information management (HIM) professionals. AHIMA’s 50,000 members are dedicated to the effective management of personal health information needed to deliver quality health care to the public. Founded in 1928 to improve the quality of medical records, AHIMA is committed to advancing the HIM profession in an increasingly electronic and global environment through leadership in advocacy, education, certification, and lifelong learning. For more information about the Association, go to www.ahima.org.

ABOUT MTIA
MTIA is the world's largest association for medical transcription service organizations. It is a not-for-profit trade association serving the needs of medical transcription companies, vendors, and health information management professionals. For more information about MTIA, visit www.mtia.com.