Who is a medical transcriptionist?

Medical transcription essentially involves converting the doctor’s medical prescription into an easy to understand text format. Medical transcriptionists are highly trained and skilled professionals who are adept at preparing medical records. They are also paid well and have to go through various training programs before they can start working as medical transcriptionists with any hospital, private clinic or an ambulatory service. Most hospitals and even doctors who are doing private practice hire highly experienced medical transcriptionists. When a hospital or any other healthcare unit looks out for medical transcription outsourcing, it is understood that they are taking a major leap in their medical operations.

Outsourcing medical transcription services from a third party will have a direct impact on their day to day operations. This impact can be positive or negative depending on what type of service provider they hire. Hence, it is crucial for a hospital or a healthcare facility to research well before it outsources medical transcription services from a third party. Before any hospital or any ambulatory service hires a service provider to provide them with medical transcription services, they should first do a thorough background check on the turnaround time of the provider, their average accuracy delivered, pricing and also how well equipped they are with data security. These are some of the important factors they healthcare institution should find out and then make a sound decision.

Accuracy is crucial for smooth running of a medical transcription business. When the hospital is verifying the accuracy of a third party provider, it has to first check the accuracy of the transcripts that have been completed correctly against the total number of medical transcripts that were dictated to them. Any medical transcription provider that has an accuracy rate of 99% is considered reliable for the job.

When you wish to hire a third party for document transcription services, another important thing you have to check is the productivity time of the provider. The productivity time is basically the time period used by the provider to deliver the transcribed report to the concerned hospital or the healthcare service. Ideally, the turnaround time of the service provider should not be more than twenty four hours for normal transcriptions and about four to twelve hours for STAT reports. Another thing to be taken into consideration is the verification of data security facility offered by the provider. Document transcription is a confidential practice; disclosure of any information can be misused. The third party provider or the transcriptionist should be a HIPAA complaint firm. The service provider should adopt basic as well as advanced security and safety measures to make sure the confidentiality and privacy of the data is well protected and does not fall in the wrong hands. It should be delivered to the healthcare facility secure and safe.

Today, most Medical transcription outsourcing companies only employ highly trained and skilled medical transcriptionists. A Transcriptionist should be well aware of the various advanced transcription softwares available in the industry and should have a thorough knowledge about technical know-how of the software.