Wednesday, February 9, 2011

Outsourcing medical transcription: Complete solutions

Medical transcription is the process of converting audio records of the patient-healthcare professional encounter into text format. Medical transcription plays an important role in the healthcare process in both the operational and commercial aspects, by creating permanent patient records and accelerating the process of reimbursement respectively.

Outsourcing medical transcription is probably one of the most efficient and economical fix for healthcare facilities looking for solutions for their documentation needs. The process of outsourcing, involves evaluating the service provider on the basis of criteria like accuracy, turnaround time, security and the price.  Another important criterion for evaluating the service provider is to ascertain whether the service provider can provide complete solutions for the medical transcription needs of the healthcare facility.

What entails complete solution for medical transcription?

  • Medical transcription for all specialties with maximum accuracy: While outsourcing medical transcription, it is important for healthcare facilities to consider not only current needs but also future needs that may arise from future expansion. It is also important that the service provider has medical transcriptionists who are trained to be domain experts in different specialties. This ensures that whenever the healthcare facility adds on a new specialty, the service provider has medical transcriptionists trained in that specialty and is able to meet the required accuracy and turnaround time levels

  • Flexible turnaround times: The turnaround time requirements for different types of reports and different specialties may vary vastly. It is important that the service provider has the requisite personnel and technology to be able to meet the turnaround time required

  • No investments required: The main of objective of outsourcing medical transcription is to save on costs and reduce investments in non-health related areas. While outsourcing medical transcription it is important to source a service provider who can offer the requisite information technology support and work with the existing systems rather than requiring further investments.

  • Weekend and holiday medical transcription: One vital point to be considered while outsourcing medical transcription is whether the service provider can provide transcription services on weekends and Holidays. It is also important the medical transcription service provider should be in a position to cope with varying influx of patients, as this is one factor that cannot be predicted

  • Additional benefits like archiving, remote printing & faxing, HL7 interface:  While outsourcing medical transcription, another factor that forms part of complete solutions, is the technological capabilities of the service provider to provide for additional features like archiving, remote printing & faxing, integration with the EMR/EHR systems etc., if required

  • Security of confidential patient information: Outsourcing medical transcription requires that the service provider should be HIPAA compliant. It is important for the service provider to protect confidential patient information at every level, by having adequate measures for technology, processes, people and infrastructure


TransDyne, a leader in the outsourced medical transcription industry offers complete 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 complete medical transcription services from TransDyne, click here.

Tuesday, February 8, 2011

Outsourcing medical transcription: Complete solutions

Medical transcription is the process of converting audio records of the patient-healthcare professional encounter into text format. Medical transcription plays an important role in the healthcare process in both the operational and commercial aspects, by creating permanent patient records and accelerating the process of reimbursement respectively.

Outsourcing medical transcription is probably one of the most efficient and economical fix for healthcare facilities looking for solutions for their documentation needs. The process of outsourcing, involves evaluating the service provider on the basis of criteria like accuracy, turnaround time, security and the price.  Another important criterion for evaluating the service provider is to ascertain whether the service provider can provide complete solutions for the medical transcription needs of the healthcare facility.

What entails complete solution for medical transcription?

  • Medical transcription for all specialties with maximum accuracy: While outsourcing medical transcription, it is important for healthcare facilities to consider not only current needs but also future needs that may arise from future expansion. It is also important that the service provider has medical transcriptionists who are trained to be domain experts in different specialties. This ensures that whenever the healthcare facility adds on a new specialty, the service provider has medical transcriptionists trained in that specialty and is able to meet the required accuracy and turnaround time levels

  • Flexible turnaround times: The turnaround time requirements for different types of reports and different specialties may vary vastly. It is important that the service provider has the requisite personnel and technology to be able to meet the turnaround time required

  • No investments required: The main of objective of outsourcing medical transcription is to save on costs and reduce investments in non-health related areas. While outsourcing medical transcription it is important to source a service provider who can offer the requisite information technology support and work with the existing systems rather than requiring further investments.

  • Weekend and holiday medical transcription: One vital point to be considered while outsourcing medical transcription is whether the service provider can provide transcription services on weekends and Holidays. It is also important the medical transcription service provider should be in a position to cope with varying influx of patients, as this is one factor that cannot be predicted

  • Additional benefits like archiving, remote printing & faxing, HL7 interface:  While outsourcing medical transcription, another factor that forms part of complete solutions, is the technological capabilities of the service provider to provide for additional features like archiving, remote printing & faxing, integration with the EMR/EHR systems etc., if required

  • Security of confidential patient information: Outsourcing medical transcription requires that the service provider should be HIPAA compliant. It is important for the service provider to protect confidential patient information at every level, by having adequate measures for technology, processes, people and infrastructure


TransDyne, a leader in the outsourced medical transcription industry offers complete 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 complete medical transcription services from TransDyne, click here.

Monday, February 7, 2011

Medical transcription outsourcing: Customized solutions

Medical transcription has always played an important role in the healthcare process, creating records of the patient-healthcare professional encounter. The criteria for evaluating medical transcription services are accuracy, turnaround time, security, and cost per line of transcription. It is also important to consider the indirect benefits of outsourcing medical transcription like savings on payroll, information technology, real estate, management staff and utilities.

Once these have been evaluated it is important to consider the fit of the medical transcription services provided, to that of the healthcare facility requirements. With the advent of the Internet it is very easy for a healthcare facility to source medical transcription service providers, but it is also important to consider whether the service provider is willing to customize its services to the needs of the healthcare facility.

The medical transcription requirements of varied healthcare facilities could vary based on the following factors:

·        Number of doctors practicing in the healthcare facility: Healthcare facilities could vary from a one-healthcare professional practice to a hospital with a large number of specialties. The service offered by the medical transcription service provider needs to be customized to suit the specific requirements of the healthcare facility

·        Specialties: Medicine is a vast field with varied specialties. The language of each specialty is complex involving specific procedures, test, drugs and terminology. The medical transcription service provider needs to have personnel well versed in the language of each specialty

·        Number of branches: Many healthcare facilities may have branches in different locations, the technological capabilities of the service provider need to be evaluated to ensure provision of seamless services

·        Type of reports/formats/templates: Different reports/ formats/ templates are required depending on the specialty; the ability of the medical transcription service provider in customizing reports/formats/templates need to be evaluated based on their experience in having provided similar services

·        Turnaround time: The turnaround time requirements can vary according to the type of report and the specialty. The capability of the service provider to meet turnaround time requirement, needs to be evaluated based on the skill set of the medical transcriptionists and the technology used by the service provider

·        Option for integrating with EMR/EHR: For adoption of EMR/EHR, the capability of the service provider needs to be evaluated for HL7 integration

·        Dictation modes: The option to retain familiar modes of dictation, is an important factor to be evaluated during the outsourcing process

·        Features like remote printing and faxing: The ability of the medical transcription service provider to provided additional features like remote printing and faxing need to be evaluated while sourcing the right service provider

·        Expansion plans of the healthcare facility: The medical transcription service provider needs to be in position to service the healthcare facility for current needs as well as have the capacity to provide services based on the expansion plans of the healthcare facility

TransDyne is a leading provider of outsourced medical transcription services, having served healthcare facilities of all types. TransDyne understands the needs of the healthcare facilities and healthcare professionals and has customized their services accordingly

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!          

Outsourcing medical transcription to TransDyne offers additional advantages like:

  • Volume flexibility
  • Medical transcriptionists trained in specialties
  • Customized reports/formats/templates
  • Different modes of document delivery
  • Facility to integrate with EMR/EHR through HL7 interface
  • Option to retain flexible modes of dictation
  • Remote printing and faxing options

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

Sunday, February 6, 2011

Medical transcription outsourcing: Makes the healthcare facility efficient

The main goals of a healthcare facility can be defined as providing quality care, education, innovation, research and customer service. The underlying objective is to attain these goals profitably. Many inputs are required by the healthcare facility to achieve their goals, like the qualification, skill level and experience of the healthcare professionals, the right equipments, adequate support staff and accurate timely information. To provide quality care the healthcare facility has to strive to improve the efficiency of the healthcare professionals and support staff and reduce expenses on non-healthcare related activities.

Outsourcing medical transcription is an easy fix to improve the efficiency of the healthcare facility’s operations in the following ways:

Providing information to the healthcare professionals by creating patient records: Medical transcription is the process of creating records of the patient-healthcare professional encounter by converting audio records to text format.

Outsourced medical transcription improves the efficiency of patient record creation in the following ways:

  1. Accuracy: A professional medical transcription service provider would ensure that information of the patient-healthcare professional encounter would be captured accurately by using skillful medical transcriptionists, multi level quality checks and a stringent quality policy. The information in the patient records helps the healthcare professionals make informed decisions on patient care, rather than rely on memory, hand written notes or inputs from the patients
  1. Timely: A professional medical transcription service provider would ensure that patient records are created in a timely manner. This improves quality of care as well as quickens the reimbursement process
  1. Secure: A professional medical transcription service provider would ensure that the confidentiality of the patient records is maintained throughout the process of transcription including the transmission, thus removing any concerns for HIPAA violation during the transcription process
  1. Flexible modes of dictation: By allowing the healthcare professionals to retain familiar modes of dictation, a professional medical transcription service provider would ensure that the healthcare professionals are able to make optimum use of their limited time
Restrict the cost of medical transcription to the cost per line of transcription: Outsourcing medical transcription ensures that the cost pf transcription is restricted to price quoted by the service provider. Additional charges like overheads and cost of coordination can be avoided

Improve the productivity of support staff by streamlining transcription flow: A professional medical transcription service provider would ensure that the process of transcription starting with the upload of dictation files, transmission to the service provider and download of finished transcripts would take place in a systematic manner. This lessens the burden of the support staff. Additional features like powerful archival system would also ensure that locating files and tracking work-in-progress would be easy

Better utilization of resources: Outsourcing medical transcription ensures that resources like real estate, Information technology staff, working capital, management staff etc. would be utilized efficiently instead of concentrating on medical transcription

It can be concluded that outsourcing medical transcription to the right service provider can improve the efficiency of the healthcare facility enormously. Care has to be taken to source the right service provider and evaluate them on the basis of the various factors like accuracy, guaranteed turnaround time, security measures, cost per line of transcription and the technology used by the medical transcription service provider. These factors can be evaluated based on training methods used, quality policy, billing methods and the software & tools used by the medical transcription company

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.

Wednesday, February 2, 2011

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.

Tuesday, February 1, 2011

Medical transcription: Outsourcing helps increase efficiency and improve services

Medical transcription has played an important role in the process of healthcare by helping document the patient-healthcare professional encounter. Medical transcription is also the first step in the process of reimbursement as it provides the basis for coding and billing.

In a time where healthcare facilities are struggling with shrinking incomes and galloping expenses, outsourcing medical transcription is an easy fix to curb costs of transcription.  Apart from curbing costs outsourcing medical transcription can help the healthcare facility increase efficiency and improve services.

How does outsourcing medical transcription help increase efficiency?

Outsourcing medical transcription helps increase efficiency of the healthcare facilities in the following areas:

·        Improving report accessibility: Outsourcing medical transcription reduces the burden of the healthcare facility support staff, by creating an orderly system for collection of audio files, uploading dictation, distribution of finished transcripts and providing additional features like electronic signature, remote printing & faxing etc. Outsourcing medical transcription also helps in tracing files through an efficient system, enabling the support staff to track the status of work in progress, at any given time. Access to patient records is also improved by use of an efficient archiving systems

·        Saving on resources:  Outsourcing medical transcription frees up valuable resources of the healthcare facility like real estate, capital expenditure on transcription equipment, office space, information technology staff, management resources and working capital.  These resources can then be utilized towards the core business of the healthcare facility, thus improving efficiency

·        One stop solution for medical transcription needs: Outsourcing medical transcription ensures that the service provider is a one stop for all the problems associated with medical transcription. This would include variation in transcription volumes, holiday & weekend transcription, addition of new specialties, inclusion of new report formats/templates, integration with EMR/EHR, and HIPAA & HITECH concerns for security of information during the medical transcription process

·        Accelerating funds flow:  Outsourcing medical transcription ensures that medical records are created on time. This ensures that the first step in the receivables cycle takes place on time. This in turn helps accelerate the reimbursement process. Quickening the receivables cycle helps the funds flow and enables the healthcare facility to perform efficiently


How does outsourcing medical transcription help improve services?

·        Improved quality of reports: Outsourcing medical transcription has added benefits like medical transcriptionists trained in specialties, multiple quality checks and the past experience & proficiency of the service provider in serving diverse healthcare facilities helps improve the quality of reports. The improved quality of the information in the patient records helps the healthcare facility improve quality of services by helping healthcare professionals make informed decisions

·        Improved turnaround time: Outsourcing medical transcription ensures that medical records are created on time. Having the right information on hand in a timely basis helps healthcare professionals improve quality of services to patients

It can be concluded that outsourcing medical transcription provides a variety of advantages to the healthcare facility. To benefit from the advantages of outsource medical transcription, it is important to analyze the specific needs of the healthcare facility and source a medical transcription company who can provide services accordingly.

The capabilities of the medical transcription service provider needs to be evaluated on the following criteria:

  • Accuracy: This means the percentage of accuracy of the completed transcripts vis-à-vis what was dictated. A minimum of 99% and above would be acceptable.

  • Turnaround time: Turnaround time refers to the time taken to revert the transcribed report to the healthcare facility. A Turnaround time of not more than 24 hours for normal reports and 4-12 hours for STAT reports would be considered ideal.

  • Data security: The service provider being outsourced to should be HIPAA and HITECH compliant. The medical transcription service provider has to have adequate security measures to ensure that the confidential data transmitted back and forth is safe and secure.

  • Pricing: Reduced costs are one of the main benefits that a healthcare facility hopes to have, from the outsourcing option. Pricing should be fair and reasonable for the services rendered. Pricing method should also be transparent and simple so that both parties can verify the same at any stage of the process

  • Technology: The technology used by the medical transcription company should not only be secure but should also be easy to use, without having to require extensive training.

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.