Healthcare is an essential service that has to be patient-centric to be effective. To be patient centric healthcare services need to be
- Transparent
- Individualized
- Respectful
- Preserving the dignity of the individual
- Offering choices to matters related to the treatment of one’s person, within reason
- Confidential
Healthcare facilities draw inputs from various sources to achieve this end. There are many contributors to making the healthcare process successful and profitable. One of the elements that contribute to the success of the healthcare process is information. Information that is in the form of patient records including:
- Demographics
- Pre-existing health conditions
- Current medication
- Medical allergies
- Family health history
- Habits that affect health
- Details of previous encounters
- Progress
- Test/x-ray/scan results
- Physical symptoms
The above information helps healthcare professionals in making informed decisions regarding the patient’s health and in formulating treatment plans. Medical transcription aids in the process of creating patient records by transcribing the audio records of the patient-healthcare professional encounter as narrated by the healthcare professionals into text format.
However medical transcription is a specialized skill requiring a lot of resources, focus and competence. Outsourcing medical transcription to a professional medical transcription service provider is one of the most effective, efficient and economical methods of creating patient records.
Outsourcing of medical transcription services should be done after a process involving the careful selection of a medical transcription service provider who can tailor their services to the specific needs of the healthcare facility. Once the right service provider has been chosen, there are numerous advantages of outsourcing medical transcription including:
- Accuracy: It is very important to document the patient-healthcare professional encounter as accurately as possible. Outsourcing medical transcription maintains the accuracy level of the patient records due to the following factors:
a) Multi level quality checks: A professional medical transcription would try and maintain the accuracy of the transcripts by having stringent quality checks to ensure minimum error rate
b) Trained medical transcriptionists: A professional medical transcription service provider would have a continuous process of recruiting and training medical transcriptionists. Moreover specialized training techniques like training in one or two specialties helps enhance the accuracy level in the transcripts
- Speed: Information in the patient records not only needs to be accurate, but also needs to be available on a timely basis. Outsourcing ensures that patient records are transcribed within an optimum turnaround time. The service provider can maintain turnaround time due to the following factors:
a) Enormous pool of medical transcriptionists: A professional medical transcription service provider would have a large pool of well-trained medical transcriptionists available on a regular basis. Due to this the turnaround time of transcripts would be unaffected by factors like absenteeism, shift changes etc.
b) Technology: Use of the right technology by the service provider can speed up the process of transcription by having features like flexible modes of dictation, automatic upload and download etc. speeding up the process of transcription
c) Total focus: Medical transcription is the core activity of the service provider, this means that all the resources of the medical transcription service provider are focused on providing timely and accurate medical transcription services
- Savings on cost: One of the main benefits of outsourcing medical transcription is that of huge savings on cost of transcription to the healthcare facility. The cost of transcription is reduced by at least 40% and is limited to the cost per line of transcription. This is possible due to the following factors:
a) Economies of scale: The medical transcription service provider deals with huge quantities of medical transcription work, thus is able to optimize the production process reducing costs. The benefits of this are passed on to the healthcare facility
b) Billing methodology: The billing method used by the medical transcription service provider can make a lot of difference to the cost of transcription. The billing method used should be measurable, verifiable, definable consistent, fair and honest
c) Savings on idle capacity/overtime: Outsourcing medical transcription ensures that the healthcare facility pays only the price per line. Factors like extra expenses on overtime for weekend and holiday transcription, and wastage due to idle capacity are eliminated
- Technology: Technology plays a huge part in the process of medical transcription by providing the following benefits:
a) Multiple utility: Technology adds to the medical transcription service by having many time saving utilities that ease the life of healthcare professionals and support staff
b) Easy to use: The use of the right technology ensures that not only do healthcare professionals get multiple benefits but also ease of use
c) Security: Technology has a large role in securing confidential patient information during the medical transcription process
- Security: Outsourcing medical transcription ensures that confidential patient information is secure during the process by securing the following:
a) People
b) Processes
c) Technology
TransDyne a leader in the outsourced medical transcription industry offers outsourced medical transcription services that support the healthcare process. TransDyne offers quality medical transcription at reasonable prices, executed by experienced and qualified 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!
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