Medical transcription: Getting value for money?

It is easy for a healthcare facility to imagine that by having transcriptionist/s in-house they have resources right at hand that will take care of all their transcription needs instantly and at reasonable costs. It is not as simple as that. There are two factors that determine the value for money that they get from the amount spent on in-house transcriptionists. One is the cost of having transcriptionists in-house and the other factor is the transcription volume.

To understand this better one needs to look at what constitutes the cost of an in-house transcriptionist.

Item	Cost in US $ per annum
Salary	30000
Benefits	8000
Real estate	2000
Furniture	1000
Computer	2000
Management	5000
Consumables	1000
Utilities	500
Miscellaneous	500
Total cost	50000

Then a look at what is the productivity of an average medical transcriptionist

Production
Number of lines per 8 hour day	1250
Work hours per year	1920
Lines per year	300000
Downtime in %	10
Actual lines produced in a year	270000
Cost per line	18.5

The annual costs of an in-house transcriptionist have been arrived at, and the number of lines an average transcriptionist can transcribe in a year now the cost per line transcribed can be ascertained. The cost per line transcribed is 18.5 cents per 65-character line.

But this is a not a fair analysis of cost per line as it is based on the assumption that the volume of transcription is constant. The volume of transcription would vary according to the influx of patients, which is not predictable. The cost per line of transcription will vary accordingly.

The chart below shows clearly how the cost per line can vary according to the volume of transcription:

Number of lines transcribed by 1 medical transcriptionist in 1month	Monthly cost of in-house Medical transcriptionist in $	%  Decrease in transcription volume	Cost per line in cents	% Increase in cost per line transcribed	TransDyne cost @ 10 cents per line	Savings by outsourcing to TransDyne in $
22500	4166.67	0%	18.52	0%	2250	1916.67
20000	4166.67	11%	20.83	13%	2000	2166.67
18000	4166.67	20%	23.15	25%	1800	2366.67
16000	4166.67	29%	26.04	41%	1600	2566.67
14000	4166.67	38%	29.76	61%	1400	2766.67

As can be seen, as the volume of transcription decreases the cost per line increases considering that the cost outlay is fixed. Hiring a professionally managed Medical Transcription Company like TransDyne to take care of Medical Transcription needs will solve both the problems of planning for volume as well as staff requirements. Not only that TransDyne takes care of any holiday staffing needs that arise, leaving the healthcare facility free to focus on other areas.

TransDyne offers quality Medical Transcription at 10 cents per 65 character line, done by expert medical transcriptionists with a very quick turnaround time executed through secure HIPAA and HITECH compliant channels, with very high levels of accuracy and all this with technology that is advanced but easy to use!

For more details about how to use TransDyne’s superior outsourced medical transcription services, click here.