Thursday, July 29, 2010

Medical transcription: The role of technology

Healthcare is a dynamic process, with constant discoveries and inventions; thereby any service allied with healthcare has to be dynamic. Medical transcription is a service closely allied with healthcare. Medical transcription is the process of creating patient records by converting the audio records of the patient-healthcare professional encounter into text format. Along with the process of healthcare, the medical transcription process has also evolved, not only to cope up with the changing demands of the healthcare sector, but also with the technological innovations that have taken place.

Medical transcription has evolved from simply being the process of listening and typing, to a service, which offer various benefits making the life of healthcare professionals and the support staff at a healthcare facility easy. One just needs to look at the medical transcription process to realize the role of technology.

What is the role of technology in the medical transcription process?
The process of medical transcription essentially begins when the patient visits the healthcare facility for treatment. The role of technology starts from the very first step:

  • Capturing the patient-healthcare professional encounter in the form of dictation
  • Transmission to the medical transcription service provider for transcription
  • The process of transcription
  • Transmssion of finished transcripts to the healthcare facility
  • Distribution to the right healthcare professional
  • Remote printing and faxing
  • Archiving
  • Interface with EMR
  • Security during the entire process of transcription
It is obvious that technology has an important role to play in the process of medical transcription both in terms of service and security. However technology for medical transcription entails substantial capital outlay. One easy fix to avail the right technical support for the process of medical transcription is to outsource the medical transcription needs to a medical transcription service provider who can provide medical transcription with not only the requisite benefits like accuracy, speed, low costs, security but also provides the right technical support.

What are benefits of outsourcing to a medical transcription service provider with the right technology?
Cost reduction: The right technology for medical transcription not only reduces turnaround time and protects the data during the transcription process but also helps reduce the costs. The cost per line of transcription can be reduced substantially with the use of the right technology by improving quality of audio files, speeding up the transmission process and reducing risk of data loss

Augmenting profitability: The use of technology can add to the profitability of the healthcare facility by quickening the medical transcription process thereby the accounts receivable process. Medical transcription is the first step in the reimbursement process, timely medical transcription ensures that the process of reimbursement can take place in a timely manner improving the cash flow of the healthcare facility

Better focus on core business: Having the technological needs of the medical transcription process taken care of by the medical transcription service provider, helps the healthcare facility focus all its resources on their core business of providing quality healthcare

Provision of quality services: The process of healthcare depends on many inputs, one of them being accurate and timely information. Technology used by the medical transcription service provider ensures that patient records are available on a timely manner to the healthcare professional to enable better decision making

Customer satisfaction: Usage of the right technology by the medical transcription service provider ensures quicker and better service, this leads to customer satisfaction

Reduction of malpractice litigation: The use of right technology ensures reduction in security breaches and capture of accurate and complete information in the patient record, both these factors help reduce risk of litigation

It can be seen that the right use of technology by the medical transcription service provider enables collection, management, sharing and protection of information. Another important benefit of the right use of technology is making it easy to use for healthcare professionals who are constantly challenged for time.

Considering that time is one of the most precious commodities for healthcare professionals, TransDyne believes in using technology that provides multiple features with ease of use. Some of the features of the software and tools used by TransDyne are as follows:

Smart upload: TransDyne offers doctors the choice of using modes of dictation they are already comfortable with. Then these files can be uploaded to the servers to be made available for transcription. Smart upload enables transfer of dictation files from the healthcare facility’s server to TransDyne’s server by checking for new dictations at pre-fixed intervals.

Web Delivery: TransDyne’s web delivery system tackles all issues related with tracking dictations, receiving documents and finding old files form the archives.

Smart Delivery: Smart delivery is an automated program that addresses the automatic downloads, saving files and printing needs of a healthcare facility.

HL7 integration: TransDyne can configure and send healthcare information as HL7 messages to the client’s EMR with no additional costs.

Data Security: TransDyne ensures data security of medical transcription by incorporating security measures like 128-bit data encryption, multi-tiered application architecture, design level security, safeguards, firewall protected networks, sterilized e-mail servers, denial of access procedure and multi modal alerts.

To avail the benefits of outsourced medical transcription from TransDyne, click here

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