AHDI Submits Comments on Legislation to Improve EHR Functionality

The Association for Healthcare Documentation Integrity (AHDI) announces its response to the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions committee's draft legislation for patient-centered EHR use and its commitment to helping improve workflow inefficiencies leading to physician dissatisfaction.

AHDI President Jay Vance, CMT, CHP, AHDI-F, states, "Medical transcriptionists (also called health care documentation specialists) have partnered with clinicians for decades, providing accurate and complete health care documentation. This longstanding partnership makes us uniquely positioned to provide feedback on how the EHR workflow may be improved upon."

AHDI's leaders identified and spoke out about several contributing factors leading to physician dissatisfaction with EHR-based documentation workflow, to include 1) an over-emphasis on structured data, 2) technology blocks that limit physicians' options, and 3) requiring physicians to perform data entry instead of providing patient care.

AHDI proposed solid solutions and inclusive language that would support a more efficient EHR workflow. Recommendations included adding wording 1) to support a balanced combination of structured and unstructured data, 2) to acknowledge that interface fees may limit physicians' choice of technology suited to their practice's needs, and 3) to include "certified health care documentation specialists" and "certified medical transcriptionists" as part of the definition of "nonphysician members of the care team" when delegating clinical documentation duties.

Read AHDI's full comments about Draft Bill BAI16031 here.

Source: Association for Healthcare Documentation Integrity