Healthcare services are considered part of the basic necessities of life like air, water, food, clothing and shelter. In fact in certain situations healthcare takes precedence over other necessities as it can involve life and death situations. Providing quality healthcare is a process, which requires a lot of inputs; one of which is prompt and accurate information regarding the patient’s medical history. The patient record contains the narrative of the patient’s visit/s, the treatment/s, procedure/s, medication/s he/she has been provided with. This helps the healthcare professional in decision making and formulating plans for further care.
Medical transcription plays a vital role in the healthcare process by creating patient records from the audio files of the patient-healthcare professional encounter. Outsourcing medical transcription is an easy fix to make the medical transcription process efficient and cost-effective.
Outsourcing medical transcription helps the healthcare facility in the following areas:
Provision of quality care: Medical transcription helps the healthcare professional in the provision of quality care by capturing the narrative of the doctor in a form that is easily accessible and legible. This becomes very important when the patient is going through a lengthy course of treatment, and there are shift changes in the healthcare facility staff
Providing proper documentation: Patient records play an important proof by documenting the course of treatment and level of progress made by the patient. This documentation process is valuable in case of any doubts in the efficacy of treatment leading to litigation. Medical transcription provides a valuable service by capturing all the details in a speedy and accurate manner
Storage and retrieval of patient records: The process of treatment could involve a single visit or several visits over the course of time. The medical transcription service provider could aid the process of storage and retrieval of patient records by creating powerful archival systems
Helps decrease errors: Medical transcription creates records that are neatly typed with all the details of the treatment and progress made by the patient. This drastically reduces the chance of errors by healthcare professionals due to illegible handwritten notes or any guesswork on the part of the healthcare professional or the healthcare facility staff
Helps curb costs: One of the major advantages of outsourcing medical transcription is enormous reduction in the cost of transcription, both direct and indirect. The healthcare facility benefits from the expertise, increased focus and the economies of scale achieved by the service provider
Quickens the reimbursement process: Outsourcing medical transcription ensures that the patient records are created on time. This is an important step in the reimbursement process as medical transcription is the first step in the accounts receivables cycle. The information in the patient records is used for coding and billing
Medical transcription plays an important role in the healthcare process; it is important to evaluate the medical transcription service provider on the following criteria:
- Accuracy: This means the percentage of accuracy of the completed transcripts vis-à-vis what was dictated. A minimum of 99% and above would be acceptable.
- Turnaround time: Turnaround time refers to the time taken to revert the transcribed report to the healthcare facility. A turnaround time of not more than 24 hours for normal reports and 4-12 hours for STAT reports would be considered ideal.
- Data security: The service provider being outsourced to should be HIPAA and HITECH compliant. The medical transcription service provider has to have adequate security measures to ensure that the confidential data transmitted back and forth is safe and secure.
- Pricing: Reduced cost of transcription is one of the main benefits that a healthcare facility hopes to have, from the outsourcing option. Pricing should be fair and reasonable for the services rendered. Pricing method should also be transparent and simple so that both parties can verify the same at any stage of the process
- Technology: The technology used by the medical transcription company should not only be secure but should also be easy to use, without having to require extensive training.
TransDyne offers 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!
For more details about the advantages of outsourcing to a professional medical transcription service provider like TransDyne, click here.
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