Medical transcription outsourcing and risk management

Medical transcription outsourcing and risk management are very closely related. Risk management involves minimizing the risk involved in the healthcare process and medical transcription is the process of creating patient records from the audio narration by the healthcare professionals of their encounter with the patient.  Medical transcription  by its very nature is an activity that requires sensitive handling and  would affect risk management 

It is a known fact that the patient- healthcare professional relationship is sacrosanct and is founded on the basis of the healthcare professional/ healthcare facility's ability to maintain the confidentiality of the privileged patient information. Protecting the confidentiality of the patient information is not only a moral obligation is also mandated by law. HIPAA has provided specific guidelines for protecting confidential patient information. The HITECH provisions that have come into effect recently have provisions that elaborate on HIPAA and have provided HIPAA added arsenal to punish offenders.

Outsourcing medical transcription has been proven to be one of the most efficient, effective and economical ways of creating patient records. However outsourcing medical transcription to a third party service provider raises some apprehensions regarding security.

However these concerns can be alleviated by choosing the medical transcription service provider with utmost care. This will ensure that the medical transcription service provider:

·        Is well versed with the requirements of HIPAA/ HITECH

·        Has provisions in place to ensure total security

Ensuring that the outsourced medical transcription service provider is HIPAA / HITECH compliant will also help with the process of risk management.

How can outsourced medical transcription service help in the process of risk management?

To understand how outsourced medical transcription helps in risk management it is important to understand the principles of risk management and how outsourced medical transcription services helps in the process.

The principles of risk management are as follows:

• Create value
• Be an integral part of the organizational process
• Be part of decision making
• Explicitly address uncertainty
• Systematic and structured
• Based on best available information
• Tailored
• Take into account human factors
• Transparent and inclusive
• Dynamic and responsive to change
• Continual improvement and enhancement

Outsourced medical transcription helps the healthcare facilities in the risk management process fulfilling all the principles of risk management in the process medical transcription.

Outsourcing medical transcription ensures:

• Medical records are created by with utmost accuracy. Outsourcing medical transcription ensures this by using medical transcriptionists who are specialists in the specialty they are transcribing in. Further quality is ensured by having a multiple level quality check ensuring maximum accuracy. The information captured in the patient records needs to be accurate as it forms a part of evidence in case malpractice litigation.

• Medical records are created on time. Optimum turnaround time is ensured by the medical transcription service provider by using the right team, the right process and the right technology. This ensures that healthcare professionals have the information needed by them for formulating plans for the patient's healthcare, on time. This helps in managing risk

• Medical records are created securely. Another aspect of risk management is protecting the confidentiality of patient information. Outsourced medical transcription helps in this aspect by having measures in place to protect patient information by securing people, process and technology.

Outsourcing medical transcription to the right service provider not only help healthcare facilities in some aspects of risk management it also helps the healthcare facilities save on costs, increase focus on core business and help provide multiple benefits by using the right technology.

TransDyne, a leader in the outsourced medical transcription industry offers total solutions to suit varying need of different of different kinds of healthcare facilities. TransDyne has teams of medical transcriptionists who are trained in different specialties, making them domain experts. This ensures that TransDyne can cope with medical transcription for any specialty with an accuracy level of above 99%. TransDyne offers a turnaround time of 24 hours with an option of a turnaround time of 4-12 hours for STAT files.

TransDyne has the technical capabilities to integrate with the existing systems of healthcare facilities, requiring no additional investments. TransDyne offers medical transcription for weekends and holidays, and has people and systems in place to cope up with varying volumes of transcription. TransDyne has software and tools that offer additional features like archiving, remote printing & faxing among other benefits. TransDyne ensures security of confidential patient information, by securing people processes, infrastructure and technology

To avail total medical transcription services from TransDyne, click here.