Today medical transcription has almost become a popular term among the health professionals and services are available for all medical specialties. What is Medical transcription? It is the extensive procedure of transcribing voice-recorded reports done by doctors and healthcare professionals into text formats for various uses including for research and reimbursements.
A medical transcriptionist's job primarily involves converting significant, confidential, and up-to-date data into written text. This text is printed and included in the patients' records, archived and retained as an EMR (electronic medical record).
Transcriptionists can today work either from inside the hospital premises, from their homes or from any other distant global location. Electronic storing of medical records is preferred by modern medical institutions because of the huge volume of patient data being accumulated. Also it makes it very easy to incorporate all details including the medicine, diseases details and other diagnostic information. Maintaining of this type of records is primarily to facilitate the patient's healthcare and also to use it as a general use data bank while still maintaining confidentiality of patient data.
What is the actual MT process comprised of? It generally includes,
# Tying of documents
# Active listening
# Information formatting
# Editing/proofreading
# Checks for compliance with medico-legal policies and procedures
Medical transcription services are offered specifically for all the different medical specialists. Today we have experienced medical transcriptionists who do specializations in transcription of different branches of medicine. Thus there has evolved various specialty medical transcriptions like radiology transcription, pediatrics transcription, cardiology transcription and so forth.
Though all medical transcription professionals have to be familiar with transcribing all branches of medicine, a specialty transcriptionist, (some one specialized in transcribing for a particular branch of medicine) often gets preferred by the respective specialist. Further specialty in each branch is also done. Thus if we take specialty transcription professional he will be an expert in transcription of all pediatric specialty areas such as allergy immunology, anesthesiology, endocrinology, cardiology infectious diseases, neurology, nephrology, orthopedics, sports medicine and general academic pediatrics.
There is a recent increased trend in the usage and dependence of voice recognition software for transcription. However the technology for it is yet not perfect and if the documents are not well looked into and edited by humans, it can give irrelevant and absurd transcripts. One can expect the regular manual transcription to be around for some time into the future and the fear of voice recognition software based transcription totally replacing the human element is not valid. Th demand for health services and medical transcription is on the rise as the number of aging population is fast growing and the law requires transcription documentation of medical bills for the insurance benefits on worker's compensations.
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