ANSI Adopts BHCOE Standard for the Documentation of Clinical Records for Applied Behavior Analysis Services


Clear medical record documentation is critical to providing patients with quality care, ensuring timely and accurate payment for services, and increasing consistency across patient documentation.

Behavioral Health Center of Excellence (BHCOE) today announced the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) has adopted Standard for the Documentation of Clinical Records for Applied Behavior Analysis Services as an American National Standard. The standard establishes national guidance to properly document and report on clinical services to ensure uniformity and consistency across payors and state lines with the aim to reduce fraud, waste, and abuse.

“Clear medical record documentation is critical to providing patients with quality care, ensuring timely and accurate payment for services, and increasing consistency across patient documentation. The more transparent documentation is, the more it helps service providers evaluate and plan patient treatment and maintain care continuity“ says Hanna Rue, Ph.D., BCBA-D, Chief Clinical Officer at LEARN Behavioral and BHCOE Commission Member.

Says Sara Gershfeld Litvak, Chief Executive Officer at BHCOE, “A key component of our mission is to establish performance-based standards. The documentation standards play an important role in long-term patient care. I am grateful for the hard work of our BHCOE Commission in assisting to create this important document.”

The development of BHCOE’s Standard for Documentation solicited input and suggestions from multiple stakeholders including practitioners, leaders of ABA service agencies, patients, advocates, state and trade associations, and academic representatives. Payors such as Kaiser Permanente in Georgia have already adopted the documentation standards within their ABA provider manual.

ANSI coordinates, facilitates, and promotes the development of voluntary consensus standards that are relied upon by the industry, government agencies, payors, and consumers across the United States and around the world.

About BHCOE

Behavioral Health Center of Excellence® (BHCOE®) is an international accrediting body created to meet accreditation needs specific to behavior analysis delivery. BHCOE develops and measures voluntary consensus standards for Applied Behavior Analysis service providers. To learn more about BHCOE visit http://www.bhcoe.org.

About ANSI

The American National Standards Institute (ANSI) is a private non-profit organization whose mission is to enhance U.S. global competitiveness and the American quality of life by promoting, facilitating, and safeguarding the integrity of the voluntary standardization and conformity assessment system. Its membership comprises businesses, professional societies and trade associations, standards developers, government agencies, and consumer and labor organizations.

The Institute represents and serves the diverse interests of more than 270,000 companies and organizations and 30 million professionals worldwide. ANSI is the official U.S. representative to the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and, via the U.S. National Committee, the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC). For more information, visit http://www.ansi.org.

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