Medical assistants must be sensitive and responsive to patient's needs.
The healthcare industry, especially ambulatory medical practices have become much more customer-driven. The doctor’s patients are now seen as customers, and medical assistants are expected to be sensitive and finely entuned to their “customer’s” needs; however, while providing excellent customer services and patient care medical assistants must also keep abreast with rules and regulations that apply to them within their state. These rules can be different from customer services provided a store or warehouse and when certain boundaries are overstepped it can cause frustrations, or harm.
Rules, Laws and Regulations for Medical Assistants
The medical assistant’s scope of practice is limited. To protect all members of the medical office team, from the doctor to the employees and their patients, medical offices should also clearly outline their medical assistant staff’s function, titles, roles, duties, and limitations in the medical office employee handbook and office policy manual. Furthermore, all medical assistants should know how to contact their State Medical Board of Examiners and professional membership association for support regarding questions about any state imposed rules, statutes, laws and regulations.
Boundaries and Limits
Every medical assistant should do thorough research to find out what they can, and cannot do. Just like any other service-providing worker, medical assistants can be held liable for any mistakes or accidents that cause loss, injury, or wrongful death. Mistakes and errors can easily trigger a liability case against a medical assistant, or medical assistant student, for misrepresentation, violation of good faith and fair dealing, inaccurate advice, negligence, or tort.
Malpractice and Liability Protection
To further protect themselves on a state level, carrying their own professional liability insurance policy can provide peace of mind. Professional liability insurance take on different forms and names depending on the profession, for example, in reference to medical professions it is often called malpractice insurance coverage. Medical assistants should never assume that they cannot be sued and that the insurance rider provided to them as a rider on the doctor’s malpractice insurance policy adequately covers them, especially if they are hired on a temporary basis, or to complete their externship.