Medical transcription: Checklist for outsourcing

Medical transcription services have aided the healthcare process by creating accurate, timely and secure patient medical records of the patient– healthcare professional encounter. The information from patient medical records provides valuable support in various aspects of the healthcare facility operations including clinical decision making, risk management and managing the receivables cycle. As medical transcription requires concentrated inputs in the form of the right teams, the right technology and a stringent process to produce optimum results, outsourcing the entire medical transcription process has been found to be an effective solution.

Outsourcing medical transcription has the additional advantage of bringing down the cost of transcription substantially and the healthcare facilities & healthcare professionals benefit from the software and tools used by the medical transcription service provider. However considering that medical transcription services are not a one-time occurrence but are required on a continuous basis, the process for outsourcing medical transcription needs to be approached with concern.

The first step of outsourcing medical transcription would be to source medical transcription service providers and assess them on basic criteria like

• Experience
• References
• HIPAA compliance
• Use of subcontractors

The next step would be to assess the medical transcription service provider on the basis of their capacity to meet the following criteria:

• Accuracy
• Turnaround time
• Easy to use technology
• Pricing

Once the medical transcription service provider has been evaluated on these criteria, the next step would be to avail a free trial of services and make a checklist elaborating the scope of services, this should include:

• Modes of dictation
• Provision for upload of audio files
• Steps involved in transcription including quality processes
• The formats/ templates used
• Guidelines specifying transcription style
• Policy for blanks
• System for monitoring work in progress
• Modes of document delivery
• Provision for delivery to specified folder
• Provision for delivery of reports to more than one healthcare professional
• Provision for electronic signature
• HL7 interface

Making a checklist of the expectations from the outsourcing process can help the make the transition to using outsourced medical transcription services seamless. Actually having the expectations listed out makes the actual services easier to assess.

 

TransDyne, a leader in the outsourced medical transcription industry has been providing medical transcription services to some of the leaders in the healthcare sector for over a decade. TransDyne:

 

• Can provide the references of their customers
• Has provisions in place that ensure that confidential patient information is protected throughout the entire transcription process
• Believes in executing all medical transcription work in-house
• Offers services with an accuracy of above 99% using specialty trained medical transcriptionists and a rigorous quality assurance process.
• Offers a turnaround time of 24 hours, along with other flexible turnaround time options for STAT files
• Has technology that provides maximum benefits while still being easy to use
• Offers reasonable price using a verifiable, measurable, definable, consistent, fair and honest billing method
• The software and tools used by TransDyne offer numerous benefits that ease the working life of healthcare professionals and other support staff at the healthcare facility.

To avail complete medical transcription services from TransDyne, click here

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Medical transcription outsourcing: Benefit from the best practices of the service provider

The practice of medicine requires expert inputs to meet the high standards of quality care and profitability. Keeping in mind that healthcare is a specialized skill requiring intense focus and concentration to produce the desired results it is important for both healthcare professionals and healthcare facilities to focus on the core business of providing quality healthcare and outsource all support activities.

Outsourcing all activities other than the core process of providing healthcare not only endows numerous benefits like reduction in costs, renewed focus of efforts and resources on the core business, but also ensures that the healthcare facility can benefit from the expertise and best practices established by the service provider.

Medical transcription is one such activity that plays an important part in the healthcare process by creating patient medical records, converting the audio dictation of the patient- healthcare professional encounter into text. Though the information in patient medical records is vital to the smooth running of healthcare facilities; contributing to the process of providing care, providing the basis of coding and billing and providing an important support in risk management, medical transcription is not part of the core activities of the healthcare facility.

The best solution available to healthcare facilities to avail accurate, timely, secure and cost effective medical transcription is to outsource their medical transcription needs to a professional service provider. Outsourcing medical transcription to a professional medical transcription service provider ensures that the healthcare facility can benefit by the best practices established by the medical transcription service provider.

What are best practices in medical transcription that can benefit healthcare facilities?

Best practices have been defined as a method, process, activity that is believed to be more effective at delivering a desired outcome than any other technique, method, process etc when applied to a particular condition or circumstance.

In the context of outsourced medical transcription services, best practices can be defined as those process that produce the desired outcome, namely:

Accuracy: One of the main quality criteria that medical transcription needs to meet is the accuracy of the information transcribed. The best practices established by the medical transcription service provider have a role to play in this regard. The accuracy would be affected by:

1. The skill of the medical transcriptionists: The medical transcription service provider would have best practices with regard to recruiting the best talent and for training policies to ensure expert transcription
2. Quality check methods: Due to various factors like distorted audio, the style of dictation, the specialty and the skill level of the medical transcriptionists, it is important for medical transcription service providers to have best practices in place that ensure that more than one set of skilled “ears and eyes” are involved in the process of quality assurance.

Speed: Apart from the accuracy, the other most important quality factor is turnaround time. It is portant for healthcare professionals and healthcare facilities to have patient medical records available to them within specific time periods. The best practices of the medical transcription service provider towards maintaining tight turnaround time would involve having:

1. A huge pool of skilled and trained medical transcriptionists in different specialties to ensure quick turnaround time without compromising on accuracy
2. The right technology to ensure speedy and secure delivery of audio for transcription and convenient modes for document delivery

Convenient: The best practices of the medical transcription company with regard to convenient options could extend to:

1. Helping retain familiar modes of dictation enabling healthcare professionals to optimize their limited time
2. Options for document delivery as per the need of the healthcare professional

Secure: The best practices of the medical transcription service provider regarding the HIPAA/ HITECH compliance during the medical transcription process would include:

1. Secure technology
2. Secure processes including 100% in-house transcription
3. Secure infrastructure

Flexible: The best practices of the medical transcription service provider with regard to flexibility would include volume flexibility, flexibility with regard to turnaround time and other factors like weekend and holiday transcription etc.

Economical: The best practices of the medical transcription service provider in this regard would be billing methods as per AHDC norms, limiting cost to cost per line of transcription, elimination of fixed costs, no hidden costs and conversion of fixed costs of medical transcription to variable costs.

TransDyne, a leader in the outsourced medical transcription industry has been serving the needs of some of the leaders in the healthcare sector for over a decade. Drawing on their experience in serving the needs of healthcare facilities and their expertise in information technology, TransDyne has established best practices that help healthcare professionals and healthcare facilities save on money, efforts and time.

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 outsourced medical transcription services from TransDyne, click here.

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