Medical transcription outsourcing: Helping attain the meaningful use objectives

Healthcare sector deals with services that strive to improve the quality of life by providing treatment for and prevention of illnesses. The quality of healthcare services provided by a nation is vital to the present and future growth of the nation. Keeping this is mind; ARRA (American Recovery and Reinvestment Act) or Economic Stimulus bill was introduced in February 2009, aimed at spurring economic growth across multiple industries through Government spending. Out of this $ 19 billion was aimed at the healthcare Industry by way of incentives for meaningful adoption and implementation of EHR (Electronic Health Record) also known as EMR (Electronic Medical Record).

On July 13th 2010 the Department of Health and Human Services and the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology announced the meaningful use criteria for adoption of nationwide Electronic Health Records. The purpose for introducing a nationwide electronic health system is to help make the healthcare system:

• Improve quality
• Improve efficiency
• Enhance safety
• Curb costs

Medical transcription and the meaningful use criteria

The process of documenting the patient- healthcare professionals encounter has evolved from handwritten notes being typed to sophisticated medical transcription services enabling:

• Capture of the dictation using sophisticated and easy to use devices
• Transcription using specially trained and skilled medical transcriptionists
• Delivery of transcripts to healthcare professionals and healthcare facilities via the modes specified by them.

Another development aiding the medical transcription process become even more efficient and economical is the concept of specialist services provided by outsourced medical transcription service providers. Partnering with outsourced medical transcription service providers can help in achieving the objectives of a nationwide electronic health record system, that is of providing quality care in an efficient, safe and cost effective manner

How can outsourced medical transcription service providers help in achieving the electronic health record objective?

Outsourced medical transcription service providers provide customized medical transcription solutions suited to the intuitively preferred method used by the healthcare professionals of documenting the patient encounter. The services provided by medical transcription service providers help in the following ways:

• Improve quality of care: By outsourcing medical transcription the healthcare facilities can increase focus on the process of care. The traditional method of converting dictation to transcripts also improves the productivity of healthcare professionals. Capturing the narrative of the patient health story helps the diagnostic process by capturing all the details comprehensively.
• Improves efficiency: Outsourced medical transcription service providers would improve the efficiency of the medical transcription process itself by providing software and tools that provide functions like automatic uploads and secure delivery of transcripts by various modes as specified by the healthcare professional.
• Enhance safety: The information in the patient records provides important inputs for the process of providing continued care. Having patient medical records transcribed by an outsourced medical transcription service provider team ensures that each transcript is subject to stringent quality checks to ensure maximum accuracy while still maintaining tight turnaround time.
• Curb costs: Outsourcing medical transcription is one of the most cost effective methods of documenting the healthcare process without compromising on the quality. Outsourced medical transcription service providers have also expanded their services to include HL7 interface and speech recognition editing services which enables healthcare professionals and healthcare facilities to adopt electronic health records without making major changes in their style of working.

It can be seen that outsourcing to the right medical transcription service provider can help healthcare facilities and healthcare professionals in adopting EMR/ EHR without using their preferred method of documenting the patient- healthcare professional encounter.

TransDyne, a leader in the outsourced medical transcription industry has been providing medical transcription services for over a decade. TransDyne has used their extensive background in information technology to create systems that provide maximum benefits and save on efforts.

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.