Thursday, June 30, 2011

Medical transcription outsourcing: Services that mitigate concerns

Healthcare services are always poised on a delicate balance, having to meet the growing demand for quality healthcare with that of contradictory demands placed on them by various sectors. The demand to provide quality services has always has been needed to be balanced against profitability and the need to meet statutory demands. One of the other factors that is vital in the delivery of healthcare services is the need to maintain the security of confidential patient information.

Due to the varied demands placed on the healthcare sector a prudent option for healthcare facilities and healthcare professionals is to concentrate on their core competence and outsource other related areas to competent service providers. One such aspect that benefits from being outsourced is medical transcription. Medical transcription is the process of creating patient medical records from the dictation of the patient – healthcare professional encounter. The information from these records is then used for providing patient care, receivables management and risk management.

Outsourced medical transcription services provide services that mitigate most of the concerns that healthcare facilities and healthcare professionals have in this regard:

  • Maintaining quality: The quality of the information captured in the patient record needs to be accurate to ensure proper care. Moreover detailed information in the patient medical record also ensures better coding and billing. Having the entire sequence of care documented also acts as protection in case of litigation. Outsourced medical transcription services ensure high accuracy levels using skilled personnel and stringent processes, mitigating many of the concerns in this regard

  • Meeting turnaround time: For the information in patient medical records to be useful for all aspects – care management, receivables management and risk management it needs to be available on a timely basis. Medical transcription companies ensure prompt turnaround time by using a combination of skilled personnel, the right processes and technology to ensure this.

  • Reducing costs: With spiraling costs and stationery level of reimbursements, controlling costs is one of the major concerns of healthcare facilities and healthcare professionals. Outsourcing medical transcription mitigates this concern by providing quality services with savings of as much as 40% as against in-house transcription. Outsourcing also enables healthcare facilities to cut down overhead costs.

  • Ensuring easy to use technology: Another major concern for healthcare facilities and healthcare professionals with regard to medical transcription is that of technology that is difficult to use. Medical transcription service providers mitigate this concern by using advanced technology that provides all the benefits while still remaining easy to use.

  • Mitigating security concerns: Maintaining the confidentiality of patient information is essential for healthcare facilities and healthcare professionals. Outsourcing medical transcription to the right service provider mitigates this concern by protecting this data at all levels using secure technology, secure infrastructure, maintaining stringent measures to protect infrastructure and educating people on the need to meet HIPAA and HITECH compliance.

Outsourcing medical transcription mitigates many of the concerns of healthcare facilities and healthcare professionals in this regard. Not only that outsourced medical transcription companies also provide services with additional benefits like transcription services for varying volumes, editing & proofreading services for back end speech recognition software and HL7 interface for EMR adoption.

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 complete medical transcription services from TransDyne, click here.

Medical transcription outsourcing: Providing information rich services

Healthcare is a service that is vital in today’s world both in terms of providing services that save lives and services that help improve quality of life. Information has a huge to role to play in the delivery of quality healthcare. The process of healthcare starts with information collection and is enhanced by having this information made available to them in an easy to use format at the right time. Medical transcription has a large role to play in transforming the data collected during the patient encounter into information that is legible, clear, accurate and in a convenient format.

The process of medical transcription converts the dictation of the patient – healthcare professional encounter into textual format using a combination of skilled medical transcriptionists, the right process and the right technology. This ensures that the patient medical records are accurate, available on a timely basis, transmitted through secure channels and at a reasonable price. Considering the inputs required for managing a complex and variable process like medical transcription, outsourcing medical transcription to a capable and reliable medical transcription company has been found to be one of the best options.  Creating patient medical records using medical transcription services results in information rich transcripts

Some of features of information rich medical transcription services are:

  • Using dictation as a means of capturing information: Using dictation as a means of capturing data at the point of care is one of the most preferred methods by healthcare professionals as opposed to entering data themselves or editing back speech recognition software.  Outsourced transcription services allow healthcare professionals to use dictation devices of their choice. This enables them to concentrate on the patients during the visit and record the details later. This has the double benefit of increasing productivity and quality reports
  • Capturing the entire patient story: Using the services of a professional medical transcription service provider ensures that healthcare professionals have the freedom to capture the entire patient story including the narrative portion. Capturing the narrative portion helps in providing better care and also offers protection against litigation by providing an information rich narrative of the care process.
  • Providing access to this information for future use: The process of care could continue over time and healthcare professionals may need to access information after a period of time. Reports created by medical transcription companies would have information rich content ensuring that healthcare professionals and support staff do not have to entirely on their memory or patient themselves to recall the details of patient medical history. Moreover outsourced medical transcription service providers also archive these records on a periodical basis and these are easy to access using various search criteria. 
Apart from the above advantages of outsourcing medical transcription, transcription services also provide services with advantages like:

  • Timely transcription ensuring specified turnaround time
  • Easy to use technology for transcription, which lower the burden of healthcare professionals and support staff
  • Editing and proofreading services for transcripts created by speech recognition software
  • Adoption of EMR/. EHR using HL7 interface
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 complete medical transcription services from TransDyne, click here.

Tuesday, June 28, 2011

Medical transcription outsourcing: Creating valuable and relevant documentation

Healthcare is based on the premise of providing valuable services by drawing on quality inputs from various sources to meet the standards expected from it. To this end, every healthcare facility has to juggle various demands placed on it  - internally and externally. Some of the internal factors include the need to provide quality services, build up a good reputation, maximize profits and optimum utilization of resources available etc. External factors include fulfilling statutory and insurance requirements.

To this end, healthcare facilities have to concentrate on their core activity - that of providing quality care and outsource activities that are not part of the core business. Medical transcription – the process of creating legible, detailed and accurate patient medical records from the dictation of the healthcare professionals is one of them. Though there are numerous choices available to healthcare facilities and healthcare professionals to document the care process, outsourcing medical transcription to a professional medical transcription company has been found to be an option that helps create valuable and relevant documentation.

Outsourced medical transcription services help create valuable and relevant documentation that helps in all the aspects that the information from patient medical records is used for, like:

Providing care: One of the main objectives for creating detailed patient medical records is to help the care process. Outsourced medical transcription services help in this by ensuring that all the details of the patient encounter are captured completely. Using transcription services to create patient medical records also ensures that the narrative portion of the patient encounter is totally captured, which helps in the care process and certain aspects of risk management.

Automatic reminders and follow-up: The process of care could involve numerous visits or consultation with specialists etc. The detailed, accurate and timely records created by medical transcription service providers help in this aspect too.

Storage and retrieval: The records created by medical transcription companies are periodically archived and access to these archives is provided to healthcare facilities and healthcare professionals. This enables easy search and retrieval options of older records using various criteria.

Submission for reimbursement: Detailed patient medical records created by medical transcription services provide the basis for coding and reimbursements. The right documentation ensures that patient encounters are not under coded and ensures proper reimbursement

Billing: Medical transcription services ensure proper documentation and this ensures that patients are billed for amounts that are not collected from insurance companies

Apart from these valuable and relevant aspects, outsourcing medical transcription services provide advantages like:

Reducing costs: Outsourcing medical transcription also ensures that healthcare facilities and healthcare professionals save on both direct and indirect cost of transcription

Lowering workload: Outsourcing medical transcription also reduces the burden of the support staff at the healthcare facility by providing support in the form of the right team,the right technology and the right process for medical transcription. This ensures accurate, prompt, secure and cost effective creation of patient medical records

Aiding EMR adoption: Outsourced medical transcription service providers also help in the adoption of EMR/ EHR by using HL7 interface.

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 complete medical transcription services from TransDyne, click here

Monday, June 27, 2011

Medical transcription outsourcing: Choose the right service provider

Medical transcription has been an important part of healthcare operations and will continue to play a vital role in the path to adopting an electronic healthcare system. Medical transcription is the process of creating patient medical records converting the dictation of the healthcare professional regarding the patient encounter into text format. This ensures that healthcare professionals and other staff have ready access to detailed information when required. This information is vital not only clinical decision making but also other areas of operation like coding, billing and risk management.

As medical transcription is a process that requires major commitment in the form of time, efforts and capital to produce the right result, and healthcare facilities are limited by too many demands on limited resources, outsourcing medical transcription to a reputed service provider can ease the burden. Outsourcing medical transcription has numerous advantages that include:

Access to the right team: As a process medical transcription is heavily dependent on the right team to produce optimum results. Outsourcing medical transcription ensures that the healthcare facility and healthcare professionals have access to the right team. The onus of sourcing, recruiting and training the right talent is entirely on the service provider. Having the right team ensures accuracy and turnaround time.

Access to the right technology: Medical transcription is a process heavily dependent on the right technology. The role of technology starts right from the first stage – that of collecting data in the form of dictation to the last stage – delivering transcripts to healthcare professionals. All the stages in between require technology to ensure easy usage, speed and security. Outsourcing medical transcription to a technologically savvy service provider ensures that the healthcare facility and the healthcare professionals have access to the right technology for medical transcription without having to make major capital investments.

Saving on resources: Outsourcing medical transcription also ensures that healthcare facilities can save on resources needed for in-house transcription like space, utilities, manpower etc.  Outsourcing medical transcription enables better utilization of limited resources towards the process of providing care.

Quality service: Outsourcing medical transcription to a reputed medical transcription service provider ensures quality services that include accurate transcription, timely delivery and the advantage of limiting cost of transcription.

It can be concluded that outsourcing medical transcription does provide an ideal solution to healthcare facilities. However outsourcing medical transcription needs to be done with caution as it essentially means taking on a partner for current and future medical transcription needs.

The medical transcription company needs to evaluated on the basis of the four cornerstones of a good business entity:
  • Reputation: The reputation of the medical transcription company can be ascertained by checking on the references/ testimonials provided by customers
  • Quality: Quality parameters can be judged by evaluating the team and processes used by the service provider
  • Service: Service levels like acceptable accuracy levels, turnaround time options and security needs to judged by evaluating the technology of the service provider
  • Free trial: Availing a free trial of services allows the healthcare facility to evaluate the services of the medical transcription service provider first hand.
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 complete medical transcription services from TransDyne, click here