Any kind of diagnostic test, medical treatment or procedure should be documented in a patient’s permanent medical record. Medical transcription is thus an invaluable service for physicians because it helps streamline the documentation process of medical records. This back office task involves the typing of medical notes which have been dictated and recorded by a healthcare professional. The typed documents are then shown to the person who dictated the notes, for his review and signature.
Medical Transcription Services – Advantages for Both Doctor and Patient
This service benefits both healthcare providers and patients. The healthcare provider will have easily accessible, organized records for each patient. The physician will have important information about the patient’s early and current history, previous surgeries and current medication.
The patient would have a complete record of his medical history and health, and benefit from appropriate treatment and care.
The Significance of Outsourcing
There are hospitals and clinics that perform the task in-house. There are also those that entrust it with medical transcription outsourcing companies owing to the tedious and time consuming nature of this back office procedure. Outsourcing continues to be a popular option because any healthcare facility would find it difficult to deliver quality healthcare and also handle staff, train them, ensure HIPAA compliance and maintain expensive equipment and technology. Outsourcing of this process brings some notable advantages such as these:
• No More Errors – An established outsourcing company will have experts in English language, grammar and punctuation, style and formatting, medical treatment and terminology, and physiology and anatomy. The transcriptionists there will have received training in comprehending different accents and in the transcription of dictations with background noises. What’s more, they usually adopt a three step quality control protocol. All these combine to ensure that the transcripts are practically error-free.
• Cost-effectiveness – When the healthcare center outsources, it does not have to invest in costly resources such as manpower and technology to get the job done in-house. Time is also freed up for core tasks. This helps to bring transcription costs down by a great percentage.
• No Worries Associated with Staffing Fluctuations – In the U.S., patient inflow usually increases in the winter months. In addition, during holiday seasons such as Thanksgiving and Christmas, hospitals are faced with the dilemma of being understaffed. Both these factors can hamper workflow and productivity. This is not the case with an outsourcing company.
• HIPAA Compliance – A reliable outsourcing company would be HIPAA compliant. Such a company would have password protected computers and lockers. All employees in the company would be trained in HIPAA guidelines and monitored in this respect. File transfer would be carried out in a secure manner.
• Online Review and Editing – Healthcare providers can access transcripts online, review them and make any changes if they feel the need.
• Custom Turnaround – These companies can meet different turnaround requirements including STAT.
Medical transcription is an invaluable service for physicians and doctors, and it is definitely worth spending time to find a capable company that would do the job properly.
