Medical Transcription - Outsourcing Affordable Services

Medical transcription is the process of converting audio records of the patient-health care professional encounter into text format. By creating patient records, it is an integral part of the health care process both in the operational and commercial aspects. Though it is vital for the smooth running of the health care facility, it is not part of the core business of the health care facility.

Creation of patient records in-house would mean that the health care facility would have to allot valuable resources for in-house transcription, diluting the focus on the core business. Moreover executing this function in-house would result in increasing the cost per line of transcription. Availing specialty to services would ensure that the focus of the health care facility is not diluted and could help curtail the cost per line of transcription.

How does outsourcing make medical transcription affordable?

It is a specialized skill requiring total focus of the service provider, the right training methods, the right process for transcription and technology geared to make the process affordable, speedy, easy and secure.

Specialized skills: Creating patient medical records requires the teams working on the transcription process to have specialized skills like an ear for language/accents, knowledge of medical terminology, good keyboarding skills and research capabilities to fill in elusive words/drugs/procedures to ensure quality. Availing these services from a transcription vendor would ensure that the service provider sources and recruits the right candidates and develops the skills to ensure that they can serve the needs of the health care professionals by creating patient records with maximum accuracy and within the turnaround time required.

Total focus of the service provider: Apart from the skill set of the teams, the process requires the total focus of resources like real estate, equipments, working capital and technology, to make it efficient and affordable. Availing these services from a specialized source ensures that the service provider focuses all its resources on this process making it efficient and affordable.

Process for transcription: To ensure that the transcripts produced are of requisite quality, it important to have a process in place that ensures that more than one person hears the audio files. This ensures that the blanks in the transcript are minimized. The transcription vendor ensures that the transcripts are put through a stringent quality check process before transmitting back to the concerned health care professional

Right technology: The process of creating patient medical records has evolved over the ages into the virtual world. This process requires technology at every stage to make the process easy, speedy and secure. Outsourcing ensures that the service provider has the right technology that only makes the process easy, speedy and secure but also provides additional benefits like archiving, HL7 integration and report distribution.

It can be concluded that outsourcing medical transcription not only makes it efficient and affordable but also has additional benefits in the form of increased accuracy and speed, technological benefits like archiving and HL7 integration.