Tuesday, October 18, 2011

Medical transcription outsourcing: Providing services that aid all participants

Healthcare is a service that cannot function in isolation. Though each patient encounter has essentially two main participants; the healthcare professional and the patient, there are numerous other participants who play varying roles. While documenting the care process it is important to consider the needs and contribution of all these participants to the commercial, operational and care aspects of the healthcare process to ensure that their specific needs are met with.

Medical transcription is one of the methods of documenting the care process that meets the needs of all the participants.

Who are the participants in the healthcare process and how do medical transcription services meet their needs?

The main participants in the care process are:

Healthcare professionals: Medical transcription companies meet the needs of healthcare professionals from the documenting process by providing services that include:

  • Using technology for transcription that provides all benefits while still being easy to use
  • Various modes of dictation
  • Option to retain the narrative portion of the encounter
  • Editing services for speech recognition software
  • Options like discrete reportable transcription, structured transcription and structured dictation to enable adoption of EMR/ EHR
  • Choices for document delivery

Support staff at the healthcare facility: The support staff at the healthcare facility accesses patient medical records for various purposes like providing care support to healthcare professionals and administering various medicines, injections etc. Moreover the support staff also needs access to the information in patient medical records for commercial aspects like billing the patients for co-pay, providing post treatment care etc. Medical transcription companies aid the support staff by providing services that include:

  • An interface that enables easy tracking of transcription at every stage
  • Easy access to archives for referring to older patient medical records
  • Providing services that are billed at reasonable cost to ensures enormous savings on cost of transcription

Coders and billing staff: The process of coding and billing starts once the transcription process is over. Medical transcription companies ensure timely transcription of clear and precise medical transcription that helps in proper coding and billing

Insurance payers: Insurance payers need proper documentation that details the care process to be able to process payments. Medical transcription companies provide detailed documents that detail the diagnostic and care process

Pharmaceutical researchers: The introduction of new drugs/ formulations requires careful tracking to evaluate the efficacy and side effects if any. Medical transcription companies ensure that the patient medical records reflect complete information, which enables the extraction of the required data for this purpose.

Public health officials: Detailed patient medical records are useful for keeping track of epidemics and other public health related issues. Medical transcription companies ensure that this data is easily available by creating and archiving records, which are easily searchable using various criteria.

Risk managers: Risk managers require detailed information regarding the patient encounter, diagnostic and treatment process as a defense against malpractice litigation. Medical transcription companies aid in this by creating accurate and timely patient medical records that includes the narrative.

Health information managers: Medical transcription companies aid health information managers by providing software and tools for medical transcription that not only meet and exceed HIPAA and HITECH regulations and other operational aspects but also in adoption of EMR/ EHR using HL7 interface

Patients and their family: As the most important participant in the healthcare process, patients need access to their personal health records in a form that is easily understandable by them. Medical transcription companies ensure this by creating accurate reports that include the narrative.

It can be concluded that medical transcription services have a large role to play in the healthcare documentation scenario meeting the needs of all the participants.

TransDyne, a leader in the outsourced medical transcription industry has used their extensive background in information technology and their experience in serving the needs of the healthcare sector to provide affordable and integrated medical transcription solutions.

Among the software and tools offered by TransDyne for transcription, the smart delivery system has a large role to play in easing the path to EMR/EHR adoption The Smart Delivery system, which has features like User defined folder paths to enable easy imports to EMR systems is the suggested mode of document delivery where pre-defined file saving would help import documents to EMR systems.  Apart from this TransDyne also offers discounted rates for those healthcare facilities that provide demographic data entered in the EMR rather than through other modes.

Along with medical transcription services involving multiple level quality checks to ensure accuracy, the use of the right technology for ease of use, turnaround time and security, at reasonable rates, TransDyne also provides discrete reportable transcription and editing & proofreading services for adoption of EMR/ EHR 

To avail complete medical transcription services from TransDyne, click here

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