Medical transcription: Blend of human expertise and technology

Medical transcription has been acknowledged as an integral part of the healthcare process by creating accurate, speedy, secure and cost-effective patient records. It has also been acknowledged that outsourcing medical transcription is an easy and economic fix to ensure timely and accurate creation of patient records.

However while outsourcing, healthcare facilities have to go through a stringent process of evaluation to ensure that they have sourced the right medical transcription service provider. For the process of assessment to be effective it is important to understand the components of medical transcription. This will provide the healthcare facility the right criteria to evaluate the service provider.

The process of medical transcription consists of the following steps:

Input: The inputs for medical transcription come from the dictation of the patient- healthcare professionals encounter in the form of audio files. The quality of the audio files is an important contributor to the accuracy of medical transcription. The quality of audio is a combination of the right technology and the dictation skills of the healthcare professional. Thus the quality of dictation is the product of a blend of the right technology and the right human skill

Process: The actual process of medical transcription involves the following steps:

• Uploading audio files: This step ensures that all the audio files are uploaded into a server to be made available to the medical transcription service provider to begin the transcription process. Technology plays a huge role in this step of the process by making the process secure, speedy and easy to use for healthcare professionals
• Downloading audio files: Downloading the audio files to begin the process of transcription involves using the right technology. This not only ensures timeliness and maintaining the quality of audio, it also ensures security of data during the process of transmission
• Listening to audio files: This part of the process involves human skills to a large extent. It is important for medical transcriptionist involved in the process of transcribing to have the requisite knowledge regarding the specialty being transcribed. This ensures that the medical transcriptionist has knowledge of the language, terminology, procedures, drugs and therapies associated with the specialty
• Typing the contents of the audio files: This part of the process also involves human skills, as speedy and accurate transcription requires that the medical transcriptionist possess keyboarding skills, knowledge of the specialty and language skills. It also requires the medical transcriptionist to have multitasking abilities, since the process involves listening and typing at the same time. The role of technology in this part of the process is limited to providing the required templates, formats, assuring audio quality and assisting with research as and when required.
• Running quality checks on the transcribed files: Running quality checks on the transcripts involves human skills, as it is the application of context and checking on the content. This requires listening skills, concentration and thinking-on-your feet abilities.

Output: In medical transcription the output is the patient record created during the transcription process. These transcripts need to be transmitted back to the healthcare facility and further distributed to the right healthcare professionals. The process of transmitting finished transcripts in a speedy, secure and efficient manner involves the use of technology. Technology adds further benefits by making it possible to print reports at a remote location, instant transmission by faxing, and easy retrieval by creating archives, integration with EMR through HL7 interface etc.

It can be seen that medical transcription is a blend of human expertise and the right technology. The process of medical transcription would be incomplete without either of these components. The skill set of the medical transcriptionists contributes to the accuracy, speediness and to a certain extent to the security of the patient records. Technology contributes to the turnaround time, ease of use and security of the medical transcription process. Both technology and the human skills involved contribute to lowering the cost per line of transcription. Therefore it is important to pick a medical transcription service provider who has the right blend of technology and people skills.

TransDyne provides medical transcription service with a blend of the right technology and the right team. TransDyne offers quality medical transcription at reasonable prices, done by expert medical transcriptionists with a very quick turnaround time executed through secure HIPAA and HITECH compliant channels, with very high levels of accuracy and all this with technology that is advanced but easy to use!

For more details about the advantages of outsourcing to a professional medical transcription service provider like TransDyne, click here.