Medical Transcription Outsourcing - Providing Outstanding Support

Healthcare is an essential service that draws support from various sources to be able to deliver services that meet quality standards. As healthcare is a business it is also important for healthcare to be profitable and meet statutory requirements. Keeping all these factors in mind it is essential for healthcare facilities and healthcare professionals to focus on providing quality services while still maintaining profitability by concentrating on essential activities and outsource all support activities.rnOne such support activity that facilitates the smooth running of healthcare facilities is medical transcription. It is the process of creating patient medical records, converting the audio files of the patient- healthcare professional encounter into text form. This is a specialized skill requiring a combination of the right team, the right technology and an optimum process to be accurate, complete, timely and easy to access. rnDoctors/ support staff/ clinics/ hospitals have various options available to them to obtain these services. They could have an in-house team, use independent contractors or outsource the entire process to a professional medical transcription service provider. As the healthcare process requires the total concentration of resources and time everyone directly involved in it, outsourcing has been found to the most viable solution. This provides support in numerous ways. How do these services provide support to the stakeholders in the care process? · Reducing cost: Reduced cost of transcription is probably one of the main advantages of availing the services of a professional vendor. Apart from considerable savings on cost, healthcare facilities can also reap the following cost benefits:rn1. Conversion of fixed cost of transcription to variable costsrn2. Savings on cost of weekend and holiday requirements rn3. Savings on indirect costs like utilities, investment in transcription equipment, allotment of space, information technology expenses etc. · Accurate services: This also helps the care process by maintaining high levels of accuracy. In context to vital services like healthcare accuracy of information is essential to ensure:rn1. Quality carern2. Meet statutory requirementsrn3. As evidence in case of litigationrn4. To ensure proper coding and billing leading to reimbursementsrn· Timely services: To ensure timely care, it is important that vital information in the patient medical records is available promptly. Availing the services of a vendor ensures that patient medical records are created on time using the right team & processes and transmitted to the healthcare professionals in a secure and speedy manner using the right technology. · Secure services: The information provided by the patient to the healthcare professional is privileged and needs to be protected. Transcription vendors ensure that this confidential information is protected throughout the entire process by securing technology, infrastructure, processes and the team. · Improve efficiency of healthcare professionals: These services help improve the efficiency of healthcare professional by offering them services with added benefits like:rn1. Flexible turnaround time optionsrn2. Retaining familiar modes of dictationrn3. Document delivery modes as preferred and specified by the healthcare professionalrn4. Archivesrn5. HL7 interfacern6. Speech recognition editingrn7. Choice to specify formats/templatesrn8. Software and tools to enable automatic upload of dictation and down load of transcripts, reducing delays. · Reduce the administrative burden: Having medical transcription in-house would involve dilution of focus of the administrative staff into activities like:rn1. Recruiting, training and retaining transcriptionistsrn2. Work allocation, follow-up and quality assessmentrn3. Collection of dictation and distribution of transcriptsrn Entrusting a vendor with this task ensures that the administrative staff is relieved of the burden of all the medical transcription related activities. · Accelerate reimbursements: Timely and accurate documentation of the patient- healthcare professional encounter is essential as a foundation to start the reimbursement process. The right service provider would ensure that quality patient medical records are created on time, thus leading to acceleration of the reimbursement process. Outsourced medical transcription services provide vital support to healthcare professionals and healthcare facilities in various aspects. However while doing this it is important to source a service provider that can provide services that are accurate, speedy, secure, cost effective and using technology that provides numerous benefits.