Friday, July 30, 2010

Why Medical Transcription Works

Medical transcription is one of the most widely outsourced works in the healthcare industry. Its services can consistently give a company the combined unique experience of accuracy, data security and absolute privacy for its records and documents. This transcription field may actually be the greatest beneficiary of outsourced transcription services.

It is the service most often provided by transcription service providers across the world. Currently, a growing number of medical providers send their dictation by digital voice files, utilizing a method of transcription called speech or voice recognition. Medical transcriptionists listen to dictation recordings by doctors and healthcare practitioners, and convert them into medical reports, medical correspondence, discharge papers, autopsy reports, etc.

A medical transcriptionist, unlike a general transcriptionist, must understand medical terminology and be able to decipher medical abbreviations. Due to the increasing demand to document medical records, countries are now outsourcing the services of medical transcription.

This type of transcription has undergone tremendous progress because of constant advances in communication and Internet technology. Outsourcing it has proved to be an extremely popular and profitable option for the medical industry. The direct and immediate advantage of outsourcing medical transcription is cost reduction, reliability in turnaround time and total security. When a company outsources this transcription, it no longer has to own a dictation system or worry about upgrading to the latest equipment.

In fact, all its capital expenses for supporting dictation and transcription are greatly reduced. Outsourcing it also work as backup copies of patient data. This is because they are always available at the servers of these outsourcing companies and so it is easier to search and access patient records. With outsourcing a company will be benefited with the following:

o It can retain focus on its core activities by increasing its efficiency in patient care.
o Eliminate the drawbacks of paperwork.
o HIPAA compliance
o Significantly reduces its overhead costs.
o Improve revenue within its department

Today there are extensive transcription services that are available that cover all kind of the specialties in medicine. It is growing day by day and is being provided to a wide range of practices and organizations that can include healthcare facilities, hospitals, laboratories, clinics, individual doctors and physicians' groups. Outsourcing companies are able to provide customized transcription services according to the needs of the clients.

There are as many medical transcription services as there are medical specialties and medical documents: radiology transcription, microbiology transcription, pathology transcription, cardiology transcription, medical review transcription, H&P reports transcription, surgery notes transcription, lab reports transcription, etc.

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Wednesday, July 28, 2010

Remote Medical Transcription Services

In the competitive healthcare arena, remote medical transcription services have great significance. Every healthcare facility, whether small or large, has to maintain proper and consistent healthcare documentation. Even though the demand for medical transcription has gone up steadily over the years, there has been a lack of skilled and trained personnel in key areas of medical transcription.

Nowadays, many healthcare practices in the US are finding it difficult to maintain the medical records of patients. As there is critical shortage of medical transcription workforce, many healthcare providers face a serious situation in which they do not get patients’ records transcribed on time, usually in times of emergency. In such situations, remote medical transcription services are the best option.

Excellent remote medical transcription services are now offered by many medical transcription firms, where the medical transcription specialists work from remote locations, even from their own homes. As this line of service is of great help for healthcare facilities, it is now being availed by medical facilities and establishments of all sizes including hospitals, professional practices, pain clinics, and others in the field, in all medical specialties. As per the needs of clients, remote medical transcriptionists transcribe the medical records dictated by doctors and others, including history and physical reports, discharge summaries, clinic notes, office notes, consultation notes, operative reports, x-ray reports, psychiatric evaluations, laboratory reports, pathology reports, and more.

By availing of the remote medical transcription services, you can gain many competitive advantages and benefits in terms of higher output and turnaround time.

Apart from these initial benefits, other benefits that can be gained include:

• Superior work product
• HIPAA compliant transcription practices
• 24x7 customer support service
• Cost-effective rates
• Security and confidentiality
• Customer satisfaction

Almost all MT (medical transcription) firms employ quality controllers to maintain the excellence of the remote medical transcription works. To provide the services in an efficient way and to stay competitive, the companies are committed to maintaining the latest technologies and equipments.

If you are in search for an MT firm that can offer remote medical transcription services, the internet is the best place to start your search. Before making a choice, it is better to conduct some research in terms of turnaround times and costs.

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Tuesday, July 27, 2010

Medical Transcription Companies in USA

As the demand for medical transcription work is increasing at a rapid rate, medical transcription companies are mushrooming in the USA. Medical transcription is a necessity in all healthcare facilities, whether they are clinics, hospitals, or other organizations. Medical transcription companies in the USA occupy a unique niche in the medical transcription field. No matter where you are located in the USA, these firms can help your practice in every stage of transcription process – all from dictation capture to document distribution.

Most of the medical transcription companies in the USA can provide superior quality, accurate medical transcription services as they employ highly skilled and experienced medical transcriptionists on staff. Moreover, these services are mostly cost-effective to cater to all kinds of budgets. These companies take care to apply and maintain up-to-date digital technologies to provide value-added transcription services.

In the USA, medical transcription companies provide services in almost all medical specialties. Professionals in these firms can undertake transcription of various medical reports including cardiology reports, operative reports, patient discharge summaries, emergency room reports, history and physical examination reports, chart notes, medical evaluations, peer reviews, psychiatric evaluations, x-ray reports and many more.

The greatest advantage of availing of the medical transcription services from a standard MT firm in the USA is that you can get access to accurate and efficient services within fast turnaround time. Apart from this, other benefits that you can gain include:

• 99% accuracy
• Security and confidentiality of the medical records and documents
• Three-tier quality checking with assured high quality work
• HIPAA compliant medical transcription services
• Electronic Medical Record (EMR) solution
• Total dictation and transcription solution

If you need a complete medical transcription solution or if you are considering outsourcing your medical transcription assignments, you will be able to find medical transcription companies online that can meet your needs. If you are interested in finding a standard medical transcription company in the USA, there are some important considerations that you need to take into account before making your choice. It is an excellent idea to conduct some research on your own in order to get the best deals.

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Monday, July 26, 2010

Medical Transcription Introduction

Introduction to Medical Transcription

Medical Transcription is the process of converting voice dictation (typically either cassette or digital format) into a permanent written record utilizing word processing equipment and software.

Each day in hospitals all over the country, thousands of patients are admitted and discharged. Examinations are conducted, procedures are performed and recommendations are made. It is not uncommon for multiple physicians to be involved in a simple procedure for a single patient. Radiologists, Pathologists, Anesthesiologists, Surgeons, and a host of other medical specialists must all coordinate their efforts to ensure that patient care is both adequate and appropriate.

Underpinning all of these activities is a complex web of medical and patient information. Each patient-related activity and procedure must be meticulously documented and then added to the patient's permanent record. Physicians and medical record handlers alike must be extremely careful to ensure that detailed patient identification information accompanies each procedure and examination report to avert potentially disastrous mix-ups. Over time, all of this information accumulates in a centralized medical records repository where it serves as a critical resource for patient care - facilitating accurate diagnoses and appropriate treatments. Indeed, timely patient care often hinges on the ability of Radiology, Pathology, and other specialty departments to quickly conduct their examinations and report their findings.

Evolution and History of Medical Transcription

In the past, patient medical charts consisted of a series of abbreviated handwritten notes that were funneled into the patient's file for interpretation by the primary physician responsible for diagnosing ailments and prescribing treatment. Ultimately, this hodge-podge of handwritten notes and typed reports was consolidated into a single patient file and physically stored along with thousands of other patient records in a wall of filing cabinets in the medical records department.

Whenever the need arose to review the records of a specific patient, the patient's file would be retrieved from the filing cabinet and delivered to the requesting physician. To enhance this manual process, many medical record documents were produced in duplicate or triplicate by means of carbon copy.

In recent years things have changed considerably. Walls of filing cabinets have given way to desktop computers connected to powerful mainframe systems where patient records are prepared and archived digitally. This digital format allows for immediate remote retrieval by any physician who is authorized to review the patient information. Reports are stored electronically and printed selectively as the need arises.

While the transition from a paper based to an electronic format will take years to complete, considerable progress has been made. Handwritten reports are largely a thing of the past. Verbal dictation is now by far the most common method for documenting and reporting the results of examinations and procedures. Physicians generally use either a cassette based voice dictation system or a digital voice dictation system to record their findings. Dictating reports verbally not only allows physicians to be more thorough in their reporting, it also saves them a great deal of time. The Wall Street Journal recently reported the results of a study conducted by the Association of Legal Administrators suggesting that verbal dictation is the fastest way to create a document. The study states that "a 245-word document takes 9.34 minutes to create with an electronic dictaphone, compared with 16.46 minutes on a personal computer and 16.49 minutes by hand." (WSJ, Tuesday, October 22, 1996, page A1, column 5). Given the salaries of most physicians, the cumulative productivity savings associated with these technological enhancements is considerable.

The process of converting voice dictation to a typewritten format is known as transcription. Traditionally a staff of skilled medical transcriptionists working in the medical records department of the hospital has accomplished the work of transcribing medical records. In the early years of medical transcription it was not uncommon for very large hospitals to have staffs of 40 or 50 medical transcriptionists working one or more shifts. A transcription supervisor, who in turn reported to the Medical Records Director, generally oversaw these transcriptionists.

The Medical Transcription Outsourcing Trend

Increasingly, traditional hospitals are coming under competitive attack by more efficient managed care organizations. In an effort to remain competitive, many hospitals have turned to outsourcing as a means of cutting costs. Many of the processes that were previously performed internally are now being contracted out to third parties. Medical transcription is no exception. The outsourcing of transcription and other functions relieves hospitals of the administrative headaches and overhead burdens associated with internal production and allows them to focus their attention on improving service and lowering costs.

This new competitive climate has driven many hospitals out of business. Those organizations that have survived have done so by becoming more efficient and cost-conscious. There is considerable evidence to suggest that contracting out medical transcription is a much less costly alternative to producing reports internally. Most savvy healthcare providers today understand this and are responding appropriately. The significant cost-cutting pressures which continue to drive the industry toward consolidation, managed care and capitation virtually guarantee that the outsourcing trend will not only continue but accelerate in coming years.

This proliferation of outsourcing agreements has spawned a new generation of small medical transcription companies intent on carving out a piece of the pie. Interestingly, in spite of its rapid growth, the medical transcription industry is still considered a cottage industry. While there are a few truly national players, the industry is at this point still dominated by the hundreds of small local transcription companies located wherever hospitals are found.

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Friday, July 23, 2010

Medical Transcription Practice Tapes: Ways to Achieve Proficiency in Medical Transcription

Medical transcription is one of the most popular home businesses and is always high on the list of those who want to work at home. Running your own medical transcription business involves typing medical notes, including a history and physical, operative reports, follow up reports etc., so that the physician has detailed information about that patient. The physician also needs a medical transcript to send to the insurance companies so he/she can be reimbursed for services rendered.

A keen sense of hearing is an ace in the game of medical transcription. A typical hearing acuity alone will not assure a 100% accuracy in the medical transcripts you produce. If you wish to master the art of medical transcription, you need to have a well-developed sense of hearing. In this field, you can't afford to make mistakes when you're typing what the doctor says. This is because there is a very thin line between each word's pronunciation as with the terms "a rock" and "Iraq". And, in a case like this, slight misheards could mean a difference between life and death especially when you're dealing with the patients' medicines. We all know that it's hard to find a medical transcriptionist who is born with an excellent sense of hearing. But, it does come with practice. You have a lot of potential to achieve good listening skills. As we always say "practice makes perfect". You can start training your ears by watching English TV shows or by talking to different kinds of people and study their voice patterns and pronunciations. Also, you can start listening to the varying accents in English of American, Australian, British, Mexican, or Indian doctors. Really, it's your choice. Although, the best approach is exposure to real physician dictations, you can also enhance yourself through the use of medical transcription practice tapes.

But what are medical transcription practice tapes? Actually, medical transcription practice tapes are recording and storage devices used by doctors for their dictations, which are converted as wav or voice files in the computer just like that of an mp3. But, there are also those medical transcription practice tapes being used by students in some medical transcription schools, which may be bought online. They are not really that different from those used by physicians except for the fact that they are utilized for a specific purpose. Medical transcription practice tapes as the name implies are only used for practice and not for actual transcription. They either contain simulated or real physician dictations. Medical transcription practice tapes are for the use of beginners who have no exposure to real physician dictations as well as for already established medical transcriptionists who just want to attain a higher level of competency in the field.

Although medical transcription practice tapes may be rented, the best option for beginners is perhaps to have a copy of their own. These days, you need not go to a specific store to purchase medical transcription practice tapes. They are available online from several websites that specialize in medical transcription. They usually come in two sizes, that is standard-sized medical transcription practice tapes and micro-sized medical transcription practice tapes.

The duration of dictation for these medical transcription practice tapes and the level of the terms' difficulty vary as well. As an added feature, answer keys are provided to compare your work with.

Whoever said you can't learn on your own must be bluffing. Medical transcription practice tapes can truly make a difference in your performance, although it is necessary to have medical terminology skills beforehand. In fact, for beginners, early exposure to actual dictations could give you the edge you need, and for seasoned transcriptionists, or people going back into the field of medical transcription, the extra practice will definitely improve the skills necessary to become a true medical language specialist.

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Tuesday, July 20, 2010

Medical Transcription Outsourcing Benefits

Medical transcription is one of the most widely outsourced jobs in the healthcare industry and is adopted as a part of easing the tedious process of medical records documentation. Processing of medical transcription jobs in-house means medical care providers have to invest a lot in terms of time and money for selecting and training the right manpower, apart from installing and maintaining costly infrastructure such as dictation equipments and computers. To keep operating costs low, outsourcing of medical transcription is the preferred choice for most healthcare firms operating in the US and UK.

A key factor that persuades developed economies such as the US to outsource their medical transcription jobs to developing countries such as India and the Philippines is the availability of cheap and qualified labor in these countries. The medical transcription firms in these countries have better infrastructures with backups for labor and internet and are thus capable of providing round-the-clock uninterrupted transcription services. The skills of medical transcriptionists in these countries include a better understanding of the spoken English language. The majority of these professionals have excellent academic qualifications and in-depth awareness of the subject.

Experienced trainers including doctors and language experts serving in medical transcription firms ensure that all their professionals are well trained in understanding medical terminologies including foreign dialects and medical terms. The intensive training provided at these outsourcing companies guarantees quality and speed. To ensure maximum accuracy in transcription jobs, all these transcription facilities have experienced editors and proofreaders. These firms also take special effort to update the knowledge base of their employees so that they are aware of the latest advanced medical treatments and medicines available in the market.

Another major benefit of outsourcing these medical transcription jobs is that backup copies of patient records are always available at the servers of these outsourcing companies and hence it is easier to search and access patient records which are years old. Moreover, these documents can be sent across multiple destinations through the internet so that doctors, regardless of their location can keep in touch with their patients and their medical treatments.

With affordable services being provided in a time-bound manner, all healthcare firms including hospitals, outpatient clinics, long term care facilities, nursing facilities, and individual physicians can now rely on these firms for smooth functioning. Today, most medical transcription providers make available other related services such as medical coding and patient bill processing. Thus with these medical transcription service providers ensuring flexible, fast and economic transcription services, medical care providers can concentrate on their core services and serve the needs of patients much better.

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Monday, July 19, 2010

Medical Transcription Jobs Are Hot Right Now

Medical transcription jobs are growing rapidly. The Internet has allowed individuals who are in disparate geographical locations to work from the comfort of home. You can exchange encrypted digital files over the Internet, which allows medical transcription jobs to be available from where ever you currently reside. You won't even have to leave home.

One of the attractions of working at a medical transcription job is the flexibility it gives you. Not being limited to a particular location, you can live anywhere and still make a good income from medical transcription jobs. There is a huge demand for medical transcriptionists. An hourly rate of $20 or more is not unusual in this field. This means that a medical transcription job is ideal for stay-at-home moms or dads.

You are able to set the hours that you work which is a big plus if you are transporting kids to school or to sports events or other extra-curricular activities. As a medical transcription job doesn't require a lot of study, you can be up and running in a short time. The pay is competitive with other similar work-from-home opportunities. You can explore the medical transcription jobs at your local hospitals or private medical facilities.

A large number of firms advertise for medical transcription jobs on the Internet. Some of the job websites have medical transcription job vacancies listed. Be especially careful that you research the companies that offer this type of work as the internet is full of fraudulent companies who will cheat you out of your hard earned income. Do your due diligence on any company that you wish to work for, before starting. Check out the forums to find out whether or not they are a credible company. Members on the forums will give feedback on who they have worked for and who to stay away from.

To find forums that cover the topic of medical transcription jobs, go to your favourite search engine or directory and type in the words "medical transcription jobs" (without the quotes) and then a space, followed by the word "forum" or "discussion" or "news" or "information" (again without the quotes). You will then be in a position to visit the forums or discussions and check out the most appropriate company to work with.

Obviously the more experience you have, the better paid you will be. It is usual for the bigger national companies to require you to have 2 to 3 years experience. To get around this, start your own home based medical transcription business and get your own accounts. You can take an online medical transcription course or go to your local community college. A good tip is to buy some real life practice tapes or CD's. This will give you some more realistic training and will compliment your education.

Which ever route you decide to take, the rewards of working from home at a medical transcription job are great. To be successful you need to take a disciplined approach and set goals and targets for your work. The difficulty you will experience if you are un-used to working at home is that no-one is standing behind you making you work. Once you have mastered the art of motivating yourself to make a success of your medical transcription job, you will find that it is a lucrative and fun way to you're your financial needs.

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