Medical transcription: HIPAA and HITECH compliance

HIPAA, Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, applies to medical transcription for protection of confidential personal health information of patients during the process of medical transcription. This data is especially vulnerable during the process of transmission. Now the HITECH act has improved and expanded on the concerns and issues raised by HIPAA

To ensure that confidential information is protected throughout the total medical transcription process the following measures need to be taken:

·       Assign responsibility to maintain the confidentiality of patient information to a person or group of persons

·       Assess security risks and identify the major threats to the security and privacy protection of health information.

·       A plan needs to be made to address physical security, personnel security, control of technical safety and security.

·       Confirming that the measures taken are adequate and effective

·       Developing strategies, procedures and guidelines for the use of personal computing devices like workstations and for ensuring mechanisms that allow limited access and locking the terminal when not in use for certain time.

·       Implement access controls like encryption, context based access, including role based or user based access.

·       Documenting all the measures taken to protect the confidentiality of patient information

To maintain confidentiality of patient information, measures need to be taken to address the issue at all levels:

·       People and processes

·       Infrastructure

·       Technology

While outsourcing the medical transcription needs of a healthcare facility one of the main concerns is whether the medical transcription service provider understands the significance of HIPAA and takes adequate measures to ensure HIPAA compliance during the process of medical transcription.

TransDyne is a leading provider of outsourced medical transcription services, understands the importance of maintaining the security of confidential patient information. TransDyne ensures HIPAA and HITECH compliance during medical transcription by implementing the following measures:

Securing people and processes:  People and processes are secured by implementing the following:

1.     No sub-contractors: Work outsourced to TransDyne is executed in-house and no subcontractors are used.

2.     Inbuilt security routines: All applications and processes have inbuilt security measures like password changes, access audits and related exercises.

3.     Joint access: Most confidential databases can be accessed only by a combination of passwords of a minimum of two individuals.

4.     Restricted Internet and Email access: Unlimited access to Internet can lead to security breaches. Access is limited to a few limited sites.

5.     Legal Declarations: Declarations are signed by employees undertaking to maintain the security of data.

6.     Security audits: Frequent audits are carried out to ensure that all procedures are followed and are effective.

Securing Infrastructure:  Infrastructure is secured by the following means:

 

1.     Company owned and managed facilities

2.     Manned security

3.     Video surveillance

4.     No removable media

Securing Technology: Technology has been secured by use of security features like

1. All medical transcription related software applications are built in-house. 
2. Database based systems.
3. 128-bit data encryption
4. Multi-tiered application architecture,
5. Design level security safeguards, firewall protected networks
6. Sterilized e-mail servers
7. Denial of access procedures and
8. Multi-modal alerts.  

Apart from maintaining security standards that not only meet but also exceed HIPAA and HITECH requirements, TransDyne also offers medical transcription at reasonable prices, done by expert medical transcriptionists with a very quick turnaround time, with very high levels of accuracy and all this with technology that is advanced but easy to use.

To benefit from outsourced medical transcription services by TransDyne, click here.

Medical transcription services: Hematology

Hematology is a branch of internal medicine, physiology, pathology, clinical laboratory work and pediatrics that is concerned with the study of blood, the blood forming organs and blood diseases. Hematology includes the study of etiology, diagnosis, treatment, prognosis and prevention of blood diseases. Physicians specialized in hematology are known as hematologists. Their routine work includes the care and treatment of patients with hematology diseases, although some may work at the hematology laboratory viewing blood films and bone marrow under the slides.

Hematologists and hematopathologists generally work in conjunction to formulate a diagnosis and deliver the most appropriate therapy if needed. Hematology is a distinct subspecialty of internal medicine, separate from but overlapping with the subspecialty of medical oncology.

Hematology medical transcription involves the transcription of audio records dictated by hematologists’ and other related healthcare professionals’ encounter with patients. Knowing that it takes a specialist to take care specialist medical transcription needs, TransDyne has trained a team of medical transcriptionists in the language of Hematology.  This has enabled the medical transcriptionists to become domain specialists.

How does specialty training in Hematology medical transcription affect accuracy levels?

Specialty training in Hematology medical transcription helps the medical transcriptionists produce quality work from the very beginning.  The medical transcriptionists are familiar with the terminology, tests, procedures and drugs related to Hematology. Due to the specialty training in Hematology medical transcription the medical transcriptionists are able to achieve accuracy of above 99% maintaining the integrity of information captured.

How does specialty training in Hematology medical transcription affect turnaround time?

Specialty training in Hematology medical transcription enables the medical transcriptionists to produce high quality transcripts within the turnaround time guaranteed. Due to the familiarity with the language of Hematology, the medical transcriptionist need not spend much time researching difficult terms in the Internet. Due to the higher levels of accuracy the number of quality checks required are less thus reducing turnaround time.

How does specialty training in Hematology medical transcription affect pricing?

Specialty training in Hematology medical transcription increases the productivity of the medical transcriptionists and decreases the time required for frequent quality checks thus bringing down the cost per line of transcription. The healthcare facility benefits from the economies of scale.

Hematology medical transcription from TransDyne not only has the benefits of accuracy above 99%, turnaround time of 24 hours and reasonable prices, it has other benefits like:

• Security: One of the main concerns that healthcare facilities have is regarding the security of data. During the medical transcription process, data is transmitted back & forth; the protection of data during this process is vital. TransDyne ensures security of data by taking on a three pronged approach, which involves security measures with regard to technology, people and processes. This ensures the confidentiality of data is protected at all stages.

• Flexible modes of dictation: Realizing that time is a precious commodity for healthcare professionals, TransDyne has made it possible for them to retain familiar modes of dictation enabling to manage their time for maximum productivity. 

• Benefits of advanced technology: TransDyne offers healthcare facilities the benefit of advanced technological features like automatic uploads of dictation; automatic downloads of finished transcripts, remote printing & faxing, power archiving facilities and HL7 integration etc at no extra costs. 

To avail superb Hematology medical transcription services from TransDyne, click here.  

Medical transcription: Anticipating the needs of healthcare facilities

Outsourcing medical transcription to the right service provider has many advantages. The more obvious ones being accurate, timely, economical and secure creation of records. Apart from the obvious, outsourcing medical transcription has many strategic advantages, one of them being the service provider tailoring their services according to what the healthcare facility may require.

It is a well-known fact that the healthcare field is constantly evolving, new things are being discovered on a daily basis, both in terms of new ailments as well as new remedies in the form of medication, procedures, therapies and surgery methods. It is important that the person/s documenting the patient records be well versed with the latest developments. Moreover the norms for documentation as well technological changes in the medical transcription field also keep evolving. All these need to be incorporated without incurring additional costs.

How does outsourcing medical transcription help healthcare facilities cope up with the changing environment?

Outsourcing medical transcription can help healthcare facilities cope up with the changing environment by anticipating their needs and tailoring their services accordingly.

Solutions are provided for changing needs of the healthcare facilities by the following methods:

·       Training methods: Training methods adopted by the medical transcription service provider have impact on the following areas.

a)    Coping with varying volumes:  By constantly recruiting and maintaining a large team of medical transcriptionists, the medical transcription service provider would be able to maintain accuracy levels and meet turnaround time commitments even with huge influx of patients.

b)    Dealing with specialties: A medical transcription service provider that creates specialist medical transcriptionists by training them in one or two specialties enables them to cope varying needs of the healthcare facilities, when new specialties are added. Moreover updating the medical transcriptionists on the latest developments in the particular specialty becomes more efficient. The medical transcriptionists are well versed with the terminology used and with the formats required enabling them to meet the highest standards of accuracy within optimum turnaround time.

·       Adopting technology: Technology adopted by the medical transcription service provider has impact on the following areas:

a)    Flexible uploads and downloads: Medical transcription uses technology for dictation, uploading of audio files and downloading of finished transcripts. The technology used by the medical transcription service provider needs to be advanced to cope with all these needs and at the time need to be easy to use. 

b)    Powerful archiving: Healthcare facilities have a huge number of healthcare professionals dictating sizable volumes of dictation on a daily basis. The healthcare facility would also be receiving huge volume of transcribed files on a daily basis. Tracing these files, dictated as well as transcribed at any given point of time can be very difficult. Anticipating this the service provider needs to use a system which has powerful archival features to enable all these functions.

c)     Security:  Security of data during transmission is on of the main concerns of healthcare facilities. Technology used by the service provider needs to provide for the security of data at all levels.

d)    Integration with EMR: Adoption of EMR needs that the service provider has HL7 interface to enable transmission of data into the EMR system without additional investment.

TransDyne is a professional medical transcription service provider that has always anticipated the needs of healthcare facilities and also incorporated the latest developments in the field of healthcare, while offering outsourced medical transcription solutions to healthcare facilities.

TransDyne offers 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.

To avail outsourced medical transcription services from TransDyne, click here.

Medical transcription: Anticipating the needs of healthcare facilities

Outsourcing medical transcription to the right service provider has many advantages. The more obvious ones being accurate, timely, economical and secure creation of records. Apart from the obvious, outsourcing medical transcription has many strategic advantages, one of them being the service provider tailoring their services according to what the healthcare facility may require.

It is a well-known fact that the healthcare field is constantly evolving, new things are being discovered on a daily basis, both in terms of new ailments as well as new remedies in the form of medication, procedures, therapies and surgery methods. It is important that the person/s documenting the patient records be well versed with the latest developments. Moreover the norms for documentation as well technological changes in the medical transcription field also keep evolving. All these need to be incorporated without incurring additional costs.

How does outsourcing medical transcription help healthcare facilities cope up with the changing environment?

Outsourcing medical transcription can help healthcare facilities cope up with the changing environment by anticipating their needs and tailoring their services accordingly.

Solutions are provided for changing needs of the healthcare facilities by the following methods: 

·       Training methods: Training methods adopted by the medical transcription service provider have impact on the following areas.

a)    Coping with varying volumes:  By constantly recruiting and maintaining a large team of medical transcriptionists, the medical transcription service provider would be able to maintain accuracy levels and meet turnaround time commitments even with huge influx of patients.

b)    Dealing with specialties: A medical transcription service provider that creates specialist medical transcriptionists by training them in one or two specialties enables them to cope varying needs of the healthcare facilities, when new specialties are added. Moreover updating the medical transcriptionists on the latest developments in the particular specialty becomes more efficient. The medical transcriptionists are well versed with the terminology used and with the formats required enabling them to meet the highest standards of accuracy within optimum turnaround time.

·       Adopting technology: Technology adopted by the medical transcription service provider has impact on the following areas:

a)    Flexible uploads and downloads: Medical transcription uses technology for dictation, uploading of audio files and downloading of finished transcripts. The technology used by the medical transcription service provider needs to be advanced to cope with all these needs and at the time need to be easy to use. 

b)    Powerful archiving: Healthcare facilities have a huge number of healthcare professionals dictating sizable volumes of dictation on a daily basis. The healthcare facility would also be receiving huge volume of transcribed files on a daily basis. Tracing these files, dictated as well as transcribed at any given point of time can be very difficult. Anticipating this the service provider needs to use a system which has powerful archival features to enable all these functions.

c)     Security:  Security of data during transmission is on of the main concerns of healthcare facilities. Technology used by the service provider needs to provide for the security of data at all levels.

d)    Integration with EMR: Adoption of EMR needs that the service provider has HL7 interface to enable transmission of data into the EMR system without additional investment.

TransDyne is a professional medical transcription service provider that has always anticipated the needs of healthcare facilities and also incorporated the latest developments in the field of healthcare, while offering outsourced medical transcription solutions to healthcare facilities.

TransDyne offers 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.

To avail outsourced medical transcription services from TransDyne, click here.

Medical transcription: How does outsourcing help increase cash flow?

Outsourcing is the process of obtaining certain services through an outside service provider. Usually the services that are outsourced are essential services that form part of the costs. Outsourcing is a good method to cut down costs and sharpen focus on the core business.

Medical transcription is the process of creating medical records of the patient -healthcare professional encounter. Though medical transcription is an essential part of the healthcare process and plays an important role in the receivable cycle, it is not part of the core competence of the healthcare facility. Outsourcing medical transcription to a professional service provider is a cost effective method of record creation in a timely, accurate and secure way.

Apart from the obvious advantages of outsourcing medical transcription, there is the added advantage of increased cash flow.

How does outsourcing of medical transcription services improve cash flow?

• By restricting cost of transcription: Outsourcing medical transcription limits the cost of transcription to the cost per line of transcription. There is no wastage of idle production capacity during slack times and no extra expenses for medical transcription when the patient influx is high. A professional medical transcription service provider would provide a package deal including weekend and holiday transcription requirements.

• By reducing investment in infrastructure: Outsourcing medical transcription eliminates the need for investment in capital investment like computers, furniture, and servers with regard to medical transcription. The healthcare facility can channel these funds for other purposes.

• By reducing expenses in utilities: In-house transcription would incur a large expense in terms of utilities like power, Internet etc. by outsourcing medical transcription the cost of utilities would be dramatically reduced, thus improving the cash flow.

• By shortening the receivables cycle: It is a known fact that the medical record of the patient is the basis for coding and billing and medical transcription is the process of creating these records. Timely medical transcription accelerates the process of reimbursement, thus improving cash flow. 

TransDyne is a professionally managed medical transcription service provider that has been providing outsourced medical transcription services for over a decade.  TransDyne provides medical transcription services, which are tailored to suit the specific needs of different healthcare facilities. Apart from increasing the cash flow of a healthcare facility, the advantages of outsourcing medical transcription to TransDyne are:

• Accuracy of above 99%
• Turnaround time of 24 hours with an option of 4-12 hours for STAT reports
• Data transmission through secure channels
• HIPAA compliance by use of secure technology, processes, people and infrastructure.
• No dilution of quality and security by use of subcontractors
• Reasonable and fair pricing ensuring enormous savings.
• Flexible modes of dictation
• Technology that not only enables automatic upload of files, download of files, powerful archiving, easy EMR integration, but also easy to use.
• Remote printing and Fax solutions
• 24/7 customer interaction to solve any issues that may arise
• Free trial for a limited period without any obligatory signup. 

To know more about the advantages of outsourcing medical transcription to TransDyne, please click here.

Medical transcription: Outsourcing advantages

When it comes to medical transcription needs of a healthcare facility, there are various options available to them. They could choose to go in for an in-house transcription team or engage Independent contractors, or engage the services of a medical transcription service provider. Sometimes healthcare facilities choose to have a combination of all three.

However outsourcing medical transcription needs on a turnkey basis to a professional medical transcription service provider has a lot of advantages. Once the expertise of the medical transcription service provider has been evaluated in terms of accuracy, turnaround time, security, technology and the flexibility of services, there are many advantages to outsourcing medical transcription the right way.

Given below are some of the advantages of outsourcing medical transcription:

1.     Saving time: By outsourcing medical transcription, the administrative staff of the healthcare facility as well the healthcare professionals can organize their limited time better to focus on the core business; that of providing quality care.

2.     Saving resources: Outsourcing medical transcription frees up resources like Information technology, real estate, working capital, management personnel etc. These resources can then be utilized more optimally.

3.     Savings on infrastructure: Having medical transcription in-house would require infrastructure like real estate, computers, utilities etc, which would have to be dedicated to medical transcription. By outsourcing medical transcription, investment on this infrastructure could be saved.

4.     Saving on efforts: A lot efforts are needed from people at every level, when medical transcription is executed in-house or through the use of independent contractors. Activities like recruitment, training requires a lot of effort. Outsourcing medical transcription makes sure that these efforts are channeled more productively.

5.     Less strain on internal resources: Due to increasing costs, decreasing percentage of reimbursements, and limited budgets, it has become increasingly challenging to manage internal resources. Outsourcing medical transcription lessens the strain on internal resources.

6.     Gaining from the expertise of the provider: Outsourcing medical transcription has the advantage of the healthcare facility gaining from the expertise of the medical transcription service provider. The experience and expertise of the medical transcription service provider add to the other benefits of outsourcing.

7.     High quality of service: As more and more resources of the healthcare facility are freed, the focus on providing quality services would improve, thereby enhancing the quality of service.

8.     Flexibility of choice: One of the major advantages of outsourcing medical transcription is the flexibility of services provided. The onus of having to organize medical transcription services for varying influx of patients, holiday transcription and weekend transcription needs is on the service provider.

9.     Increase shareholder value: With the minimization of costs, profits are maximized thus increasing shareholder value.

10. Streamlined and improved operations: With one of the vital functions in the healthcare process, being taken care of, the administration of the healthcare facility is free to focus on other areas. This helps streamline and improve operations.

11. Being competitive: The ability to cut costs without affecting the quality and turnaround time of medical reports, gives a competitive edge to the healthcare facility.

12. Improvement and expansion of services: With huge cost saving benefits and improvement in efficiency, by outsourcing medical transcription, the healthcare facility, improvement and expansion plans become a reality.

13. Improvement in cash flow: Medical transcription is the first stage of the receivables cycle. Outsourcing medical transcription ensures that the turnaround time is reduced, thus quickening the receivables cycle. This in turn improves the cash flow.

Apart from all the above strategic advantages, outsourcing medical transcription needs to a professional medical transcription company like TransDyne has benefits like 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!

To avail outsourced medical transcription services from TransDyne, click here.

Medical transcription: Flexible services

It is a constantly changing world, needs are also constantly changing. It is the onus of the service providers to be flexible to meet the changing requirements of their target customers. Medical transcription is a service that has been allied with the healthcare sector by converting the audio records of the patient-healthcare professional encounter into text format. To fulfill the varying needs of the healthcare sector it is important that medical transcription services be flexible.

What are the factors that could affect medical transcription?

• Varying influx of patients: The influx of patients is not something that can be predicted. It is important for medical transcription service providers to be prepared for varying volumes of transcription depending on the inflow of patients.

• Turnaround time requirements: Different specialties have different turnaround time requirements. Sometimes the healthcare professional may require the report to be transcribed instantly and sometimes a time lag does not affect the process of healthcare. A medical transcription service provider has to be in a position to meet the varying turnaround time requirements

• New specialties being added to existing healthcare facilities: A medical transcription service provider may be used to transcribing only for certain specialties. When new specialties are added the medical transcription service provider has to develop competency in transcribing for the new specialty as well as keeping up with the current demands. 

• Expansion plans: Healthcare facilities may have plans to expand geographically as well as in other ways. This could mean that the medical transcription service provider needs to adjust to various new factors like new healthcare professionals, new specialties, new formats, different accents, different time zones, different turnaround time expectations and even different systems

• Different formats required by different specialists:  Medical transcription service providers have to keep up with the demands of different formats of reports required by different specialists.

• New developments in the field of healthcare: Healthcare is a field that has constant developments. This could be in the form of discovering new ailments, new therapies and invention of new drugs and procedures. A competent medical transcription service provider has to constantly update its’ team of medical transcriptionists to enable them to provide expert medical transcription services.

• Adoption of EMR: Healthcare facilities may decide to implement an EMR/EHR system. This would require a medical transcription service provider to enable entry of information into the EMR/EHR via HL7 interface.

• Adoption of voice recognition software: Sometimes the medical transcription service provider has to adopt the role of proofreader/editor when healthcare facilities have adopted voice recognition software for their medical transcription needs.  

Being associated with healthcare, medical transcription services have to be flexible to meet the varying needs.

TransDyne, a leader in medical transcription believes in being flexible to meet the varying needs of healthcare facilities.

TransDyne has a team of expert medical transcriptionists who have trained to be domain experts in various specialties; this ensures that medical transcription needs for new specialties added are handled expertly.

TransDyne has the technology in place to handle HL7 interface for EMR/EHR

adoption.

TransDyne can handle varying turnaround time requirements as well any specific formats required by healthcare professionals.

Outsourcing to a company like TransDyne, which is a leader in the medical transcription industry provides numerous benefits like medical transcription services with 99% accuracy, a guaranteed turnaround time of 24 hours with an option of 4-12 hours for STAT reports, technology that is advanced but easy to use and transcription through secure channels to ensure HIPAA compliance.

To avail flexible medical transcription services from TransDyne, click here.

Medical transcription: Specialty services for Oncology

Oncology: “Onco” derived from an ancient Greek word meaning bulk, mass or tumor and suffix  -logy meaning study of; is a branch of medicine that deals with tumors (Cancer). A medical professional who practices oncology is an Oncologist.

Oncology is concerned with:

• The diagnosis of any cancer
• Therapy, like surgery, chemotherapy, radiotherapy and other modalities.
• Follow-up of cancer patients after successful treatments
• Palliative care of patients with terminal malignancies.
• Screening efforts as a means of early detection. 

Oncology medical transcription involves the transcription of audio records dictated by oncologists’ and other related healthcare professionals’ encounter with patients. Knowing that it takes a specialist to take care specialist medical transcription needs, TransDyne has trained a team of medical transcriptionists in the language of oncology.  This has enabled the medical transcriptionists to become domain specialists.

How does specialty training in oncology medical transcription affect accuracy levels?

Specialty training in oncology medical transcription helps the medical transcriptionists produce quality work from the very beginning.  The medical transcriptionists are familiar with the terminology, therapies, procedures and drugs related to oncology. Due to the specialty training in oncology medical transcription the medical transcriptionists are able to achieve accuracy of above 99% maintaining the integrity of information captured.

How does specialty training in oncology medical transcription affect turnaround time?

Specialty training in oncology medical transcription enables the medical transcriptionists to produce high quality transcripts within the turnaround time guaranteed. Due to the familiarity with the language of oncology, the medical transcriptionist need not spend much time researching difficult terms in the Internet. Due to the higher levels of accuracy the number of quality checks required are less thus reducing turnaround time.

How does specialty training in oncology medical transcription affect pricing?

Specialty training in oncology medical transcription increases the productivity of the medical transcriptionists and decreases the time required for frequent quality checks thus bringing down the cost per line of transcription. The healthcare facility benefits from the economies of scale.

Oncology medical transcription from TransDyne not only has the benefits of accuracy above 99%, turnaround time of 24 hours and reasonable prices, it has other benefits like:

• Security: One of the main concerns that healthcare facilities have is regarding the security of data. During the medical transcription process, data is transmitted back & forth; the protection of data during this process is vital. TransDyne ensures security of data by taking on a three pronged approach, which involves security measures with regard to technology, people and processes. This ensures the confidentiality of data is protected at all stages.

• Flexible modes of dictation: Realizing that time is a precious commodity for healthcare professionals, TransDyne has made it possible for them to retain familiar modes of dictation enabling to manage their time for maximum productivity. 

• Benefits of advanced technology: TransDyne offers healthcare facilities the benefit of advanced technological features like automatic uploads of dictation; automatic downloads of finished transcripts, remote printing & faxing, power archiving facilities and HL7 integration etc at no extra costs. 

To know more about superb oncology medical transcription services by TransDyne, click here.