Medical transcription outsourcing: Finding the right service provider is the key to long-term success

The process of healthcare has always been supported by quality documentation to be able to function effectively. Healthcare depends on information in patient medical records to function effectively in several areas including, clinical, operational, research, epidemic management, risk management and commercial purposes.  There are many ways of documenting the patient- healthcare professional encounter; medical transcription, the process of converting the dictation of the healthcare professionals to text is one of the most preferred methods given the advantages of this method.

The process of medical transcription ensures that patient medical records are created with maximum accuracy and legibility, within specified turnaround time, in a cost effective manner and transmitted through HIPAA compliant channels. To meet all these performance standards, medical transcription requires an optimum combination of the right team, the right process and use of the right technology.

Though medical transcription plays a vital role in the efficient running of healthcare facilities, it is not part of the core business. The easy fix for healthcare facilities to ensure quality documentation is to outsource the entire process to a professional medical transcription service provider. However the process of outsourcing medical transcription needs to be approached with caution to ensure that the medical transcription service provider meets all the medical transcription needs of the healthcare facility on a long-term basis.

To ensure that the right service provider is chosen it is important to elaborate on the role of medical transcription and assess the medical transcription service provider against these criteria.  Medical transcription service providers need to assessed on their ability to meet the following criteria:

• Quality of patient care: The quality of patient care depends on many factors, one of the vital factors being the information in patient medical records. Patient medical records reflect the history of the patients, symptoms, treatments availed, allergy information, reports on tests & procedures availed, inputs from specialists if any and also the demographics. This information forms a foundation for the healthcare professional to plan the patient's treatment plan. Outsourced medical transcription service providers ensure that all this data is captured accurately from the dictation of the healthcare professionals' dictation using skilled medical transcriptionists and a stringent quality assurance process.

• Healthcare professionals satisfaction: To ensure that outsourced medical transcription services satisfy the needs of the healthcare professionals, it is important to source a medical transcription service provider who can customize their services on the basis of the specific requirements of the healthcare professionals including:

1.      Mode of dictation

2.      Mode of document delivery

3.      Turnaround time

4.      Formats/ templates required

• Reimbursements: Documenting the patient encounter is essential to ensure proper reimbursements.  Medical transcription services need to keep this factor in mind during the process of transcription to ensure quality documentation.

• Finances and resource allocation: One of the major advantages of outsourcing medical transcription is the substantial savings on cost. Not only does outsourcing medical transcription ensure cost savings it also ensures that the healthcare facility can allocate other vital resources like IT, real estate, utilities etc on their core business instead of on medical transcription.

• Adaptability to changes in technology: Taking into consideration the changing documentation scenario it is important to source a technologically savvy medical transcriptions service provider and assess them on their capabilities to change with the changing requirements in terms of technology.

It can be concluded that outsourcing to the right medical transcription service provider can provide major benefits to the healthcare facility, which permeate various levels of the healthcare facility.

TransDyne, a leader in the outsourced medical transcription industry has used their extensive background in information technology and their experience in serving the needs of the healthcare sector to provide total medical transcription solutions.

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!               

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