Outsourcing your medical transcription can have many advantages, including:
- Cost effectiveness
- Addressing the concern of finding qualified personnel
- Improving turnaround time
- Being accurate and reliable
- Reduced infrastructure expenditures
- Reducing human resources responsibility for hiring and supervising
- Managing fluctuations in work load
1. Cost Effectiveness
Pay only for results. The industry standard is to charge by the line. One line is 65 characters. To check the accuracy of a count, in MS Word, use Tools > Options > Word Count (characters and spaces). Divide this number by 65 and that is the number of lines you should be paying for. Beware of companies that charge line count based on the number of lines counted in a document. Never worry again about how productive your medical transcriptionist is, or about how long it takes to format a letter.
2. Qualified personnel
You’ll never have to hire again. And especially in offices with multiple specialties, you don’t need to find a medical transcriptionist who knows those particular specialties and the vocabulary. Outsourcing to a larger transcription pool ensures that transcriptionists familiar with each specialty are assigned those dictations to transcribe.
3. Improving turnaround time
Don’t get backlogged. If you have an increase in workload, employees off sick, or you are simply a high volume clinic, outsourcing ensures that all your work is returned within a pre-agreed upon time frame. Your transcribed documents may even be available the next business day. This greatly aids in reviewing and editing documents, while the patient visit is still fresh in the physicians mind. It also ensures that referral letters are sent out in a timely fashion, and reduces the amount of time that staff will spend looking for documents, to see whether or not they’ve been transcribed.
4. High Quality and Accurate Medical Records
Medical transcription service providers adhere to globally standardized, PIPEDA and HIPAA compliant medical transcription processes. Additionally, medical transcription service providers have levels of quality assurance, employing highly experienced and qualified medical editors. This results in high quality and accurate records.
5. Reduced Infrastructure Expenditures
There are many levels of quality and sophistication for recording and transcribing equipment. Outsourcing to a medical transcription service provides access to high end dictation equipment as well as state-of-the-art software for transmission, downloading, typing and submitting dictations, without any of the ensuing capital expenses. If you have your own equipment and it requires service, you may not have access a ‘loaner’ system, and be unable to dictate and/or transcribe while the equipment is out for repair. As well, medical transcription companies can help you with ensuring that your medical practice is compliant with privacy legislation for your outsourced medical transcription work. With companies that provide telephone dictation services, you have the convenience of being able to dictate from multiple locations, and not be limited by a system that is located in your office.
6. Reduced human resources responsibility for hiring and supervising
Hiring, training and supervising medical transcription staff can require a substantial investment of the physician’s and/or office manager’s time. There are costs involved in advertising for qualified transcriptionists. And depending on the job market in your locality, it may be difficult to find and retain a quality transcriptionist. Additionally, you never have to worry about staffing for vacation, sick time and maternity leaves. Or about what to do when your medical transcriptionist quits.
7. Managing fluctuations in work load
The time of year (such as flu season), holidays, and your schedule will influence the amount of dictation and consequent work load for your medical transcription. By outsourcing your medical transcription work, you never have to consider how the volume of transcription will impact on the overall office workflow.
Outsourcing your medical transcription can improve your office efficiency and save you time and money. For more information about outsourcing your medical transcription, call 2Ascribe Inc.
Check our medical transcription dictation tips next month to learn about the phonetic alphabet.
