Medical transcription outsourcing: Repeated reviews for quality

Quality has become the keyword in most businesses. Quality of products and services drive the business in terms of profitability, reputation and long-term sustenance in the market place. Quality of services in healthcare is essential as healthcare is a service that deals with one of the most precious commodities – the life and health of human beings.  Quality of healthcare services is the culmination of many factors; one of the factors that affects the quality of healthcare services is the quality of information in patient medical records

There are many options available for documenting the care process, however medical transcription is one of the easiest methods of documenting the patient encounter, as it intuitively fits into the work life of healthcare professionals. Quality medical transcription requires concentrated efforts and resources to meet quality standards. However the advent of technology and the Internet it has become easier for healthcare facilities and healthcare professionals to avail medical transcription services from specialized vendors who can deliver quality services that meet all the parameters of being accurate, timely, secure and cost effective.

 While outsourcing medical transcription one has to systematically evaluate the service provider in terms of the methods used by them to deliver quality services. Quality transcription is the result of using the right people, the right quality process and the right learning process. One of the main processes that play a role in the delivery of quality transcription services is the quality review processes.

Given below are some of the type of reviews and their advantages:

Concurrent review: Concurrent reviews occur when transcripts that have gone through the first stage of transcription by the medical transcriptionists and are subject to complete and comprehensive review. This is absolutely essential when the expertise of the medical transcriptionist has not been established or when the medical transcriptionist transcribes for a new specialty or when transcribing for a new healthcare professional. Concurrent reviews are aimed at not only improving accuracy but also the turnaround time.

Retrospective review: Though concurrent reviews are ideal for the quality process, it may not be possible to review 100% given the tight turnaround time requirements. However reviews are an essential learning tool especially for medical transcriptionists, it is important to have retrospective reviews. This allows the refinement of the training process to ensure that these findings are inculcated into the learning process

Review of flagged documents: This type of review occurs when the initial or first stage of medical transcription has flagged blanks/ error etc. It is important to review these transcripts and resolve the flagged errors before transmitting for final authentication to the healthcare professional/ healthcare facility. The refining of this type of review process ensures that the time of healthcare professionals is used for providing care and not for correcting errors that have been flagged.

Using the findings from these reviews as feedback: The purpose of these reviews is to help improve the quality and reduce errors. Therefore the findings from these reviews are used as a learning tool to improve the work of medical transcriptionists. Another important aspect of these findings is also to provide feedback to healthcare professionals. The findings can be used to educate healthcare professionals in best practices for dictation.

Periodic review of security processes: Medical transcription companies are legally and morally obligated to protect confidential patient information during the transcription process. This data becomes especially vulnerable while being transmitted back and forth. Periodical reviews of the HIPAA and HITECH compliant measures with regards to people, technology, processes and infrastructure is required to ensure security.

One can conclude that while outsourcing medical transcription it is important to choose a medical transcription company that has clear policy for reviews regarding quality and security

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.

Among the software and tools offered by TransDyne for transcription, the smart delivery system has a large role to play in easing the path to EMR/EHR adoption The Smart Delivery system, which has features like User defined folder paths to enable easy imports to EMR systems is the suggested mode of document delivery where pre-defined file saving would help import documents to EMR systems.  Apart from this TransDyne also offers discounted rates for those healthcare facilities that provide demographic data entered in the EMR rather than through other modes.

Along with medical transcription services involving multiple level quality checks to ensure accuracy, the use of the right technology for ease of use, turnaround time and security, at reasonable rates, TransDyne also provides discrete reportable transcription for adoption of EMR/ EHR 

To avail complete medical transcription services from TransDyne, click here.