Medical transcription outsourcing: Providing smart services

Over the years the dependence of the healthcare sector on proper documentation of the patient encounter has increased keeping in view the escalating statutory regulations and patient requirements. The information from patient medical records is used for various purposes including clinical decision-making, receivables management and as a backup support for risk management. Medical transcription services have evolved to suit the changing needs of the healthcare sector using the right training methods to develop skilled teams, the right technology to support increasing demands and the right processes to ensure that quality standards are maintained. In fact, it has been found that availing medical transcription services from a professional service provider has been found to be more beneficial than having an in-house medical transcription department or engaging the services of independent contractors.

In fact outsourcing medical transcription helps healthcare facilities save on time, money and efforts, while still maintaining quality standards. Outsourcing medical transcription ensures that healthcare facilities and healthcare professionals have access to SMART solutions for their medical transcription needs.

How do outsourced medical transcription service providers provide SMART solutions to the needs of healthcare professionals and healthcare facilities?

The SMART solutions provided by medical transcription service providers can simply be described as:

S- Simple technology

Over the years medical transcription services have evolved into sophisticated services aimed at providing maximum benefits to healthcare professionals and healthcare facilities using the latest technology. As healthcare professionals are busy individuals whose main concentration is on providing quality care to their patients, outsourced medical transcription service providers have ensured that the technology used by them for medical transcription provides numerous benefits while still being simple to use. Some of the benefits from technology that simplify the working life of healthcare professionals are:

• Options to use dictation devices of their choice
• Automatic upload of audio files for transcription
• Editing and proofreading services for speech recognition software transcription
• Easy access to older records
• Document delivery modes of their choice
• Electronic signature
• HL7 interface
• Remote printing and faxing options

M- Meeting HIPAA and HITECH standards

 

The relationship between the patient and the healthcare professional is sacrosanct and is based on the trust shown by the patient in the healthcare professional/ healthcare facility's ability to keep this information confidential. Outsourced medical transcription service providers have mitigated the concerns of healthcare professionals and healthcare facilities in this aspect by ensuring services with HIPAA and HITECH compliance.

 

A- Maintaining accuracy levels

 

 As the information from patient medical records is the basis of many aspects of successfully running the healthcare facility it is important that the accuracy levels are as close to 100% as possible. Outsourced medical transcription service providers have ensured that high levels of accuracy are maintained by training their medical transcriptionists in specialties making them domain experts and have a quality assurance policy involving multiple level checks. This ensures that patient medical records are transcribed by expert medical transcriptionists and are subject to quality checks involving several “eyes and ears”

 

R- Reducing costs

 

One of the main concerns of the healthcare facilities is the need to curb costs. Outsourcing medical transcription ensures that they can save on cost of transcription substantially both in terms of direct and indirect costs. Moreover outsourcing medical transcription also ensures that the fixed cost of medical transcription is converted to variable costs that are based on the actual usage of these services.

 

T- Timely services

 

It is important for healthcare facilities to have timely access to information from patient medical records for every aspect of operations including providing care, managing the receivables cycle and preparing for risk management. Outsourcing medical transcription ensures that transcripts are delivered on time to healthcare professionals through the mode specified by them, through secure means and without compromising on quality standards

 

It can be seen that outsourcing medical transcription to an experienced and professional medical transcription service provider can help healthcare facilities in various aspects.

 

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.

 

TransDyne offers quality medical transcription at reasonable prices, executed by experienced and qualified 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 smart medical transcription services from TransDyne, click here.

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Quality Medical transcription: Foundation for revenue cycle and first line of risk management

Medical transcription plays an important part in the healthcare process, creating records of the patient-healthcare professional encounter by converting audio files of the healthcare professional into a text format. Though this is the main service provided by medical transcription, there are a large number of benefits to be derived from quality medical transcription.

By creating accurate, timely and secure records, medical transcription additionally helps healthcare facilities in two main areas:

Speeding up the revenue cycle: The revenue cycle of a healthcare facility typically follows the following stages:

• Patient visit/Emergency visit
• Collection of patient demographic data
• Treatment /test/procedures/referrals
• Dictation of the patient visit by the healthcare professional
• Medical transcription
• Coding and billing
• Claims processing
• Reimbursement of claimable amount.

It is evident that timely and accurate medical transcription can help speed up the revenue cycle, as it forms the base of information about the patient’s visit and all other relevant details. This information is then used to start the process of reimbursement.

Risk management: Risk management is the process of assuring that covered persons receive all of the health care services they need, to which they are entitled under the contract, no more and no less at the most cost effective level possible by reducing or eliminating untoward incidents that might lead to injury or illness of patients.

In an increasingly litigious environment it is important that healthcare facilities are adequately covered against risk of litigation by keeping accurate records of the whole treatment procedure covering all the details. Medical transcription aids in the process of risk management by capturing every nuance of the treatment process as narrated by the healthcare professional, in an accurate and timely manner.

Another potential litigation risk that healthcare facilities face is due to the leakage of confidential patient information, namely a HIPAA/ HITECH  violation, during the process of medical transcription. The data becomes vulnerable to exposure during the process of medical transcription by being transmitted back and forth. A service provider providing quality medical transcription would ensure adequate measures are taken to protect the data, pertaining to technology, processes, people and infrastructure.

As medical transcription plays such an important role in different aspects of the healthcare process, it is important to stringently evaluate the medical transcription service provider on various aspects.

What are the criteria for evaluating a medical transcription service provider?

Quality/accuracy: As the information captured in the medical record plays such an important role in various aspects of the healthcare facility operations, it is important to evaluate the medical transcription service provider on the basis of the accuracy levels guaranteed. Apart from the accuracy level guaranteed by the service provider, it is important to evaluate the service provider’s ability to meet quality standards. This can be ascertained by evaluating:

a)The number of quality checks used to achieve accuracy
b)The training methods used
c)The quality guidelines adopted by the service provider
d)Ascertaining whether the service provider executes all the transcription work in-house or by using subcontractors.

Turnaround time: Timely delivery of finished reports is an important aspect of ensuring that the reimbursement process takes place on time. It is important to evaluate whether a service provider will be able to meet turnaround time guarantees. This can be ascertained by evaluating:

a)Availability of skilled medical transcriptionists
b)Skill level of the medical transcriptionists
c)The technology used for transcription

HIPAA and HITECH compliance: As maintaining the security of confidential patient data is of absolute importance, it is important to evaluate the service provider on the basis of HIPAA/HITECH compliance. The service provider needs to be evaluated on the following:

a)Steps taken to protect technology
b)Steps taken to protect processes and people
c)Steps taken to secure Infrastructure

Cost of transcription: The reduced cost of transcription is perhaps one of the most important benefits of outsourcing medical transcription. It is important that the price quoted by the medical transcription service provider be evaluated to ascertain that it is fair and reasonable to the services rendered. This can be evaluated based on the billing methodology used by the service provider.

Track record: Ascertaining the track record of the service provider in providing similar services is an important aspect of evaluating the capability of the medical transcription service provider. This can be evaluated by verifying the testimonials of satisfied customers.

Technology: Technology used by the medical transcription service provider plays an important part in three vital areas, namely:

a)Turnaround time
b)HIPAA/ HITECH compliance
c)Ease of use

Evaluating a medical transcription service provider based on all these aspects would ensure efficient, effective, secure and economical medical transcription services.

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 benefit from immaculate medical transcription services by TransDyne, click here

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Medical transcription outsourcing: A blend of technology and human expertise

Medical transcription is a service that has become an essential component of healthcare services. Outsourcing medical transcription enables the process of healthcare to become quicker and efficient by creating records of the patient-healthcare professional encounter in an accurate and timely fashion. Additionally it also curbs costs by making the process economical and secure. Efficient medical transcription can also accelerate the reimbursement process.

It is obvious that medical transcription is more than just the process of record creation.

What exactly are the components of efficient and effective medical transcription?

To be effective and efficient, medical transcription has to have the right blend of technology and human expertise.

What role does technology play in the process of medical transcription?

Turnaround time: Turnaround time indicates the time between uploading the dictation and when the final transcript is made available to the healthcare facility. Technology plays an important role in meeting the turnaround time requirements. Use of technology enables the audio file to be delivered automatically to the medical transcriptionist for transcription by checking for files at regular intervals and uploading them. The finished transcripts are also delivered quickly and efficiently through a web based system

Security: Security of confidential patient data is one of the biggest concerns of healthcare facilities outsourcing medical transcription. Technology ensures that the data is protected during transmission using safety features like data encryption, security safeguards, firewall protected networks, sterilized e-mail servers, firewalls etc making the data secure

Lowering costs: Using the right technology enables the process of medical transcription to be quicker and safer. This increases the productivity, thus reducing costs. By making the process secure, technology also ensures that the healthcare facility is protected from litigation due to breach of security.

Ease of use: Use of the right technology enables the healthcare professionals to optimize their time, by providing multiple features that have time saving benefits and are easy to use.

What role does human expertise play in the process of medical transcription?

Accuracy: The quality/ accuracy of the transcribed document refers to the percentage of accuracy in the transcribed document viz. a viz. the audio files. The percentage of accuracy in the transcripts is largely dependent on the skill level of the medical transcriptionists. The recruitment and training process of the medical transcription service provider determines the skill level of the medical transcriptionists.

Turnaround time: The turnaround time of the finished transcripts depends on both the technology used as well the skill level of medical transcriptionists. The familiarity of the medical transcriptionist with both the system used for transcription as well as the specific terminologies used by the healthcare professional enables the medical transcriptionist to produce quality transcripts on time

Lowering costs: Skilled medical transcriptionists can lower the cost of medical transcription by producing quality transcripts on time. This increases the productivity and reduces the number of quality checks required, thus lowering costs

In conclusion it can be said that for medical transcription to efficient, effective and economical it requires the right blend of technology and human expertise.

TransDyne, a leading provider of outsourced medical transcription services uses the right blend of technology and human expertise to provide medical transcription solutions. Some of the  benefits of outsourced  medical transcription services  by TransDyne are:

• Accuracy of above 99%
• Turnaround time of 24 hours, with an option of 4-12 hours turnaround time for STAT files
• HIPAA and HITECH compliant medical transcription using the right technology, processes and people
• Fair and reasonable prices
• Technology with maximum utility with easy to use features

To avail medical transcription services from TransDyne,  click here.

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Medical transcription: Outsource the right way!

Medical transcription is an important contributor to the smooth running of a healthcare facility. It is important for medical transcription be accurate, timely, reasonably priced and transmitted through secure channels. Outsourcing medical transcription to the right service provider can make this possible.

However while outsourcing such a vital function as medical transcription, care needs to be taken to prepare the groundwork for outsourcing:

Preparing the groundwork for outsourcing: Outsourcing a vital part of the healthcare process to a service provider is essentially like taking on a long-term business partner. Thereby it is important that the decision to outsource is based on inputs from every department affected by the decision.

What are the factors to be considered before outsourcing medical transcription?

a)Consulting staff: The services of the medical transcription service provider are going to be used by not only healthcare professionals, but also support staff, billing department and Information technology department. It is important to get inputs from all the people who are directly or indirectly affected by medical transcription so that the right service provider is selected.

b)Drawing up objective criteria for evaluation: It is important to have a clear objective for the outsourcing plan; this enables the healthcare facility to evaluate the medical transcription service provider thoroughly. The criteria for outsourcing could be varied, it could be cutting costs, streamlining transcription flow, reducing turnaround time or improving quality. Sometimes it could be a combination of one or more of the objectives.

c)Follow up references: Instead of taking the promises/claims made by the service provider it is important to check the references provided by the medical transcription service provider to ensure that they can deliver the promises made by them.

d)Analyze quoted price thoroughly: The billing methods used in medical transcription are varied and are subject to manipulation. The price quoted by the medical transcription service provider cannot be taken at face value, it is important to know the components of cost to be able to compare the prices quoted by different providers in an equitable manner.

e)Focus on factors beyond price: Medical transcription plays a long-term role by documenting the patient data. This information could be called upon in the future for various purposes, including litigation. It is important to weigh factors like the capability of the medical transcription service provider in providing similar services, quality of reports, the skill set of medical transcriptionists, adoption to EMR and archiving capabilities in addition to the cost factor.

f)Consider future requirements: It is important to choose a service provider who has the capability to grow along with the future requirements of the healthcare facility. Factors like increasing volumes, adding on new specialties will affect the level of service required. The service provider needs to be evaluated on the basis of their ability to service future requirements

g)Consider technological compatibility: Technology has changed the way medical transcription works. Information Technology (IT) has made the process simpler, quicker and more secure. It is important to evaluate the service provider on the basis of technological capabilities and whether further investment is required on the healthcare facility’s behalf before availing the services.

h)Avail free trial: It is important to test the services of the medical transcription service provider by availing a free trial  before actually signing the agreement.

i)Contract evaluation: The contract is the document that specifies the service level expected. It is important to study the contract carefully for clauses that are binding and consider their impact before signing. Points like restricting use of subcontractors, provisions for HIPAA and HITECH compliance need to be included in the contract document.

TransDyne is a leading provider of outsourced medical transcription services that has anticipated the needs of healthcare facilities and designed their services accordingly.  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 benefit from outsourced medical transcription services by TransDyne, click here.

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Medical transcription outsourcing: The benefits of doing it the right way!

Medical transcription is the process of converting the audio records of the patient-healthcare professional encounter into text format. Outsourcing medical transcription ensures that patient records are available on time, the cost per line of medical transcription is reduced and the receivables cycle is accelerated.

Apart from the above-mentioned benefits, outsourcing medical transcription has far reaching benefits that permeate every level of a healthcare facility.

What are the benefits of outsourcing medical transcription to a professional service provider?

To understand the benefits of outsourcing medical transcription, it is important to see how medical transcription outsourcing benefits different departments.

Management team: By outsourcing medical transcription the management of a healthcare facility can benefit from the following:

• Savings on investment to be made for computers, furniture and other equipment for the medical transcription process
• Savings on investing and upgrading technology required for medical transcription
• Time saved on reconciling the billed amounts with the services rendered due to the transparent billing method used by the medical transcription service provider
• Reduced cost per line of transcription leading to savings

Administrative team: Outsourcing medical transcription can benefit the administrative staff of a healthcare facility in the following:

• No hassle of recruiting, training and retaining medical transcriptionists
• No hassles of managing turnaround time or accuracy in the finished documents
• The onus of taking precautions for HIPAA and HITECH during the process of transcription is passed on to the medical transcription service provider

Healthcare professionals: The doctors or other healthcare professionals who are actually dictating the audio files benefit from outsourced medical transcription services in the following manner:

• Healthcare professionals are allowed to retain their familiar modes of dictation, which gives them the flexibility of managing their time in the best way possible
• Outsourced medical transcription provides additional support to healthcare professionals in the form of powerful archiving facilities, which makes it easier for healthcare professionals to trace files in an easy and hassle-free manner helping them make informed decisions

Support staff team: Outsourced medical transcription provides additional benefits to the support staff like:

• Remote printing and faxing
• Facility to correct/edit reports online
• Searching and locating reports when required by the healthcare professionals

Information technology team: Outsourced medical transcription services benefit the Information technology staff by freeing their time from medical transcription related information technology requirements by taking care of the following requirements:

• Interfacing with the EMR/EHR
• Redundancy and backup requirements
• By installing and upgrading software/hardware required for medical transcription.

Outsourcing medical transcription needs to a professional service provider like TransDyne offers healthcare facilities complete solutions for all their medical transcription needs. 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 benefit from outsourced medical transcription services by TransDyne, click here.

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Medical transcription outsourcing: Excellence through proactive solutions

Medical transcription plays a vital role in the healthcare process both operationally as well as commercially. Medical transcription is the process of converting the audio records of the patient-healthcare professional encounter into a text format, this ensures that the health information regarding a patient is available to the healthcare professional in a timely manner instead of having to rely on resources like hand written notes or memory.

Commercially, medical transcription is the first step in the accounts receivables cycle. Having the medical records transcribed in an accurate and timely manner helps speed up the receivables cycle.

Through the various stages of evolution of the process of creating records of the patient-healthcare professional encounter, medical transcription has played a vital role in anticipating the needs of healthcare professionals and healthcare facilities, and created proactive solutions. Whether it is the limited time available to the healthcare professionals or the need of a healthcare facility to easily retrieve health records of a patient through a powerful archival system, medical transcription service providers have always anticipated the needs of healthcare facilities and come up with solutions to meet these needs.

How does outsourced medical transcription provide proactive solutions to the documentation needs of a healthcare facility?

By saving time: Outsourced medical transcription solutions save time of healthcare facilities at various levels.

1. Saving time of healthcare professionals: Time is perhaps one of the scarcest commodities available to healthcare professionals. Outsourced medical transcription services help healthcare professionals to optimize their time by allowing them to use flexible modes of dictation. High accuracy of documents in the transcribed documents ensure that healthcare professionals do not have to spend time going through records and correcting them. Moreover by providing healthcare professionals with powerful archival systems less time is spent on tracing files of patients.
2. Saving time of healthcare facilities administrative staff: The administration of a healthcare facility would have conflicting demands on their time. By outsourcing medical transcription, a healthcare facility administration can save on time that would otherwise have been spent organizing medical transcription. Time spent on activities such as recruiting medical transcription staff, collecting dictation and distributing finished transcripts etc. would be saved.

By saving resources: Outsourced medical transcription brings about saving of resources like space, overheads, utilities, working capital, management resources, Information technology, transcription equipment etc.

By cutting costs: One of the most valuable contributions of outsourced medical transcription is the saving of costs. Not only does outsourcing medical transcription bring down the cost per line of transcription, but it also brings down associated costs like extra payment for weekend & holiday transcription, wastage due to idle transcription capacity during slack times etc.

While outsourcing the medical transcription needs of a healthcare facility, care should be taken to evaluate the medical transcription service provider not only on the basis of criteria like accuracy, turnaround time, pricing, security and technology used, but also on the capacity of the medical transcription service provider to anticipate the needs of a healthcare facility and be proactive in finding solutions.

TransDyne is the new standard in medical transcription, providing solutions for the needs of healthcare facilities. TransDyne has the capacity to provide solutions for any type of healthcare facility, ranging from single doctor practices to huge hospitals with various specialties. TransDyne uses the right technology; the right processes and has the right team to cope up with the varied needs of 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 benefit from outsourced medical transcription services by TransDyne, click here.

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