This guide provides recommended guidelines for the essential elements to be included in the design and implementation of an efficient, secure, risk-free work environment for medical transcription and health information documentation.Improve and increase production.Reduce healthcare costs by minimizing injury/illness.Increase retention and professional longevity.Ensure regulatory compliance with state and local government requirements as well as federal privacy and security regulations.1.1 This guide identifies ways to improve the medical transcription workstation, including, but not limited to, the work environment, which encompasses ergonomics and security issues, equipment, references, and tools.1.2 This guide will assist healthcare managers, vendors, medical transcription service owners, and individual medical transcriptionists to make informed decisions related to the design of an efficient medical transcription work environment compliant with federal regulatory agencies.1.3 This guide does not address the medical transcription process or training.1.4 This standard does not purport to address all of the safety concerns, if any, associated with its use. It is the responsibility of the user of this standard to establish appropriate safety and health practices and determine the applicability of regulatory limitations prior to use.
This specification covers the format and content of digitally recorded voice data files and their identifying data. The object is to enable transfer between independent digital dictation systems and workstations, regardless of manufacturer and protocols for ensuring reliability. This specification is specifically targeted for the definition of a message encapsulating both the data elements and actual voice file encoded in a standard compression algorithm. The digital voice file format is Resource Interchange File Format (RIFF). Different digital voice file format shall be: PCM; ITU/CCITT A Law; ITU/CCITT mu Law; OKI ADPCM; IMA (DVI) ADPCM; TrueSpeech; and GSM 610. This specification is specifically targeted for the definition of a message encapsulating both the data elements and actual voice file encoded in a standard compression algorithm.1.1 This specification covers the format and content of digitally recorded voice data files and their identifying data. The object is to enable transfer between independent digital dictation systems and workstations, regardless of manufacturer and protocols for ensuring reliability. This specification does not cover the transmission of voice data files and their identifying data within digital dictation systems and workstations or their transcription into text files.1.2 This specification may be applied to either the transmission of data over medium- to high-speed data communication networks or to the transmission of data by recording on, and later playing back from, magnetic or optical digital storage media. It defines the blocked stream of data, called a message, which is transmitted over a network connection or recorded on a storage medium. It does not define the hardware or software network protocols or storage media formats needed for message transmission (for example, see ISO 8072-1986) or the formats used to store data internally by the sender or receiver.1.3 Since some standardization in storage media format and network protocols would help to promote the exchange of data between computer systems with diverse hardware and software, it is suggested that readily available universal media and formats be used for data exchange when possible.1.4 Any considerations regarding the security of the digital dictation file or its components as defined herein are outside the scope of this specification. Such measures as encryption of files (either at rest or in transit), authentication of users or originators, assignment and control of file access permissions, and backup or recovery of files which may be necessary to meet institutional policies or governmental regulations are not addressed in this specification. Guidance for security of dictated health records can be found in Guide E 1902.