Over the past few years, we’ve seen organizations increasingly subjected to rules and regulations around making documents, services and websites accessible. We’ve also seen over and over again court cases and structured settlements to stop the discrimination. But how do we deal with high volume transactional documents and how do we make these documents accessible?
A transactional document could be defined as services rendered and billed such as an invoice. Think about a credit card statement, a wealth document, your insurance policy or even health documents such as an after-visit summary to a Medicare Advantage Part C document.
If you consider that these documents are typically received in your post box, these documents now have multiple delivery channels from web banking, portals, payment portals and from provider portals. The print providers are seeing these requirements being dictated by their clients. We’ve seen this in the Student Loan space and most recently in the Medicare Advantage annual enrollment rules.
CMS has put forth this guidance update effective January 1, 2024:
Organizations are required to provide information to individuals in accessible/alternate formats (for example, Large Print, Braille), upon request and thereafter, as outlined in Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 (and subsequent revisions). Such individuals must have an equal opportunity to participate in enrollment, paying premium bills, and communication with the plan, as members who do not request accessible/alternate formats.[1]
As a print service provider who works with a provider, clients now need to receive their:
- EOB
- ANOCs
- EOCs
- Directories
- Formularies
- Letters
- LIS
- Statements
These must be made accessible both for their digital versions and for their physical alternate formats.
Print Service Providers have been printing and posting these documents but now these must be made accessible as the patient’s preferences are now being captured during enrollment. In order to not discriminate, your health provider will request all documents available on-line and by request now have to be made fully accessible to a screen reader or an assistive technology in addition to providing braille, Large print or even audio.
With thousands to hundreds of thousands of these documents being created, and now requiring tagging for accessibility or a workflow to a physical alternate format, print provider companies need a solution to ensure they can keep their health provider business.
Crawford Technologies has the solutions to create accessible PDFs to WCAG 2.0 AA requirements for Section 508/504 and alternate formats to meet Medicare Advantage physical alternate format requirements. These solutions as part of AccessibilityNOW can process thousands of PDF files and make them accessible and ready for alternate format production. Your Health Service clients will want to hear about these solutions and how you can meet their requirements.
Join us on November 2nd at 1 p.m. Eastern to see how Crawford Technologies’ tools like AccessibilityNow Designer, Transactional and Validator can be used to meet your client’s needs.
[1] Medicare Managed Care Manual, Chapter 2 Medicare Advantage Enrollment and Disenrollment
