Purely Medical Transcription Blog...!

Being in the medical transcription field for so long, I'm always fascinated by the different processes that clinics use to document visits, and I almost always bring up dictation to them. Maybe I'll talk to the right person and get a sale out of it, but that's not my primary goal. My goal is to understand real-world examples of how people are doing medical documentation, so that we can improve our product.

I recently had a doctor's appointment, and noticed that there was a computer in the exam room with me. The nurse came in, took my vitals, entered them in on the computer, and left. When the doctor came in, he worked with me for quite some time, and entered his findings into the computer.

Instinctively, I asked the doctor if he ever dictated any of his notes. He said that the policy at their clinic was to not do this, and that more and more facilities are moving to EMRs (Electronic Medical Record). I told him what I our company did, and we talked about the pros and cons of their methods. He was definitely spending more time in the room with me, which as a patient I felt was great, but his attention was focused on the computer for half of the time, and it took him forever to enter his notes. Most of his notes were standardized - templated - so he was able to do that quickly, but when it came time to enter a unique comment about the visit, he had to type it all in by hand.

Of course EMRs are not going away, I told him, and templates are a great method of input for some EMR's, but what some clients have discovered is that you can do your templated entry on a computer and then dictate just the portion that would normally take you three-to-four times as long to type. EMR vendors are calling this a Dictation Marker or Placeholder. Transcription companies can now type these smaller pieces of dictation and send them back to the EMR with the Placeholder (usually a numeric code), which the EMR uses to place that transcribed text into the previously started note.

As medical documentation evolves and EMRs become more popular, there will always be a push for reducing costs. But if you examine the costs of dictation and transcription to the costs of the loss of time a doctor experiences between patients, you rapidly see that his time is better used dictating and seeing patients than typing reports. Several methods of cost reductions are already available - templating, voice recognition, dictation markers - but there are still times where good old fashioned dictation-transcription is the best method to use.

Fortunately, by talking to physicians like this, we're keeping that focus, and also improving our application to work with any other cost savings methods that come out. Transcriptionstar supports templating, voice recognition, and dictation marker integration with EMRs. And we're always keeping our eyes open for the next industry trend.

After analyzing all these steps you can choose your medical transcription services provider.

How to choose a Medical Transcription Service ?

In this blog I want to share some tips for medical transcriptions. For medical transcription, the three most important factors needed to evaluate when choosing a dictation service are turnaround time, accuracy, and security.

What do you mean by Turnaround time?

The standard dictation service offers 24 to 48 hour turnaround. Many also offer STAT service, which provides 1, 2, or 4 hour turnaround.

• How does time of day force the delivery plan? If you submit your dictation at 8 pm for STAT transcription, will it get the immediate attention you need? Or will it be queued up until the following morning?

• How do they backup their guarantee? If they return transcriptions late, do they give you a discount?

• Do different types of notes have different times?

What is the mean of Accuracy?

Inaccurate medical transcriptions are worse than no medical transcriptions at all: serious mistakes can endanger patients’ comfort or put at risk legal agreements.The dictation service you choose should employ transcriptionists with significant expertise in this field, as well as quality assurance (QA) staffers to double check your medical transcripts before they’re released is must.

What is Security?

For web-based announcement, the industry standard for safety is 128-bit SSL security. If the dictation service uses another method of communication, ask what steps they take to make sure it’s secure. Transfer unencrypted files over regular email is not a secure method of transferring your audio files or the resulting medical transcription.

After analyzing all these three steps you can choose your medical transcription services provider.

Medical Transcription Services

After textile, diamonds and software, it is medical transcription that is going to earn the 4th largest forex for our country. While software business is open only for professionals, transcription business can be pursued by any entrepreneur. The Medical Transcription industry of the US is worth $7 billion. What’s more, this entire industry is ours for the taking provided we are ready to sow in our efforts. To add to this, we have millions of graduates who can very well be a part of this industry. However, these aren’t exactly the best English speakers and writers. Also, a medical transcriptionist must be able to listen with concentration. He/She must be skilled in understanding of American accent.
Perhaps the toughest thing to be trained in for a medical transcription aspirant is the medical terminologies that can easily number into more than 1, 50,000. Only when one trains oneself suitably for each of these things, will it be able for him/her to contribute worthily as a quality medical transcription company.

Click here for Transcriptionstar's medical transcription services