Saturday, October 15, 2011

Medical transcription: Using dictation as the basis for better services

Documenting the care process has become an essential part of the healthcare facility’s operations as it supports various areas of their operations, primarily in terms of quality of care, reimbursements and risk management among other factors. With the proposed move to a nationwide electronic healthcare system there has been increased emphasis on achieving the meaningful use objectives. With the increased focus on the process of healthcare documentation and with the introduction of numerous methods of documenting the healthcare process, dictation supported by expert transcription services has increasingly emerged as a preferred method of documenting the care process.

Why is dictation-to-transcription one of the preferred methods of documenting the care process?

Convenience: One of the main advantages of dictation as a means of capturing the details of the care process is the sheer convenience of this method. Healthcare professionals intuitively gravitate towards this option as they can use dictation devices of their choice – hand held recorders, phone in systems etc. This method of dictation to transcription even supports the use of speech recognition software. When healthcare professionals use backend speech recognition software to create transcripts, medical transcription companies provide editing and proofreading services for these transcripts to bring the accuracy to acceptable levels.

Flexible: The option of dictation-to-transcription is not only convenient but is also flexible. It is not only flexible in terms of the devices used for dictation but also in terms of the healthcare professionals’ schedule. Healthcare professionals have the option to dictate as per the availability of time instead of during the actual care process as required by other options for documenting the care process.

Focus: Using dictation as a means of documenting the care process has the additional advantage of allowing healthcare professionals to focus entirely on the patient instead of on the documentation process. This results in better productivity and improved patient satisfaction

Meaningful use: Using dictation and transcription services can effectively lead to meeting the meaningful use criteria by effectively using the vast human and technological resources at the medical transcription company’s disposal to achieve many of these objectives. Medical transcription companies offer many options like structured dictation, structured transcription, discrete reportable transcription and HL7 interface which enables this.

Understandable information: One of the most important advantages of dictation to transcription for all stakeholders in the care process is the creation of understandable information. With the number of people accessing the patient medical record for various purposes like providing continued care, coding, billing, risk management, epidemic & disease control, research purposes, communication to patients etc it is important for the information in patient medical records to be easily understandable.

Scalability: Documenting the care process using the dictation-to-transcription method provides scalable solutions. Passing the burden of documenting the care process to healthcare professionals given their time constraints and burgeoning volumes could result in poor quality and limited documentation.

Above all documenting the care process requires a special set of skills that includes:

  • Recruiting and training the right team
  • Mobilizing and customizing the right technology
  • Establishing and implementing the right process for quality and turnaround time

From the above it can be concluded that not only is dictation-to-transcription one of the most preferred and convenient methods of documenting the care process but outsourcing medical transcription to a professional medical transcription company can add to this by reducing the cost of transcription enormously.

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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