Medical transcription outsourcing: Meeting and exceeding service level expectations

Medical transcription and healthcare services have had a long-term association. Medical transcription aids the healthcare process in various ways including clinical decision making, risk management and managing the receivables cycle by creating patient medical records from the dictation of the patient- healthcare professional encounter. As medical transcription is not a part of the core business of the healthcare facility, outsourcing medical transcription has been found to be an effective, efficient and economical solution.

Considering the criticality and the importance of healthcare services, it becomes essential that all the processes including medical transcription that contribute to the healthcare process meet certain quality standards to ensure quality services as well as commercial viability.  While outsourcing medical transcription it becomes imperative for the healthcare facility to set certain expected service levels to ensure quality services.

What are expected service levels?

Service levels have been defined as a common understanding about services, priorities, responsibilities, guarantees and warranties.

What are the service levels that define medical transcription services?

The service levels for medical transcription services include:

• Accuracy: As medical transcription is the process of creating patient medical records, accuracy of transcription is perhaps one of the foremost requirements, as the accuracy of this information is vital for clinical decision-making, reimbursements and risk management. It is important to define the minimum acceptable levels of accuracy and the recourse when these accuracy levels are not met with

• Turnaround time: Apart from the accuracy of information, the other factor that has a significant impact on all the aspects is that of turnaround time. It is important to set acceptable standards for turnaround time including flexible options for different specialties and turnaround time for STAT reports.

• Security: There are norms for security prescribed under HIPAA and HITECH, which are aimed towards protecting the confidentiality of patient information. As medical transcription is a process which involves working with this information, it is necessary to set standards of security for all aspects including technology, infrastructure and teams.

• Flexibility: As the volume of medical transcription is dependent on the inflow of patients, which is impossible to predict, it is important to source a medical transcription service provider who has the capabilities to meet the varying needs of healthcare facilities and healthcare professionals without compromising on quality.

• Viability: Reduction in costs is perhaps one of the driving forces behind the outsourcing decision, it is important to assess that the rates quoted by the medical transcription service provider actually result in cost saving. To ensure this it is important that the billing method used by the medical transcription service provider be assessed. The medical transcription service provider has to use a billing method that meets the standards of being measurable, definable, verifiable, consistent, fair and honest.

• Technological compatibility: Due to advances in technology and the advent of Internet, medical transcription has evolved into the virtual world. Technology has a major role to play in the process of medical transcription by providing benefits like flexible modes of dictation, preferred document delivery modes, easy access etc. The expected standards for technology used for the medical transcription process can be set as providing multiple advantages while still being easy to use.

• Ability to accommodate future requirements: The healthcare documentation scenario is constantly changing due to changing statutory mandates and innovations in technology for medical transcription. The medical transcription service provider needs to be able to accommodate the changing documentation needs like editing for speech recognition software transcription and HL7 interface for EMR/EHR adoption. 

TransDyne, a leader in the outsourced medical transcription industry not only meets the service level expectations but exceeds them. TransDyne, a leader in the medical transcription industry has made quality a key word in their work processes. They have adopted the process of continuous and comprehensive quality improvement to improve quality of medical transcription at every level. This attitude of adopting quality as the basis of their services and their aptitude in information technology has helped them come up with easy to use medical transcription solutions that help save on time, money and 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 complete medical transcription services from TransDyne, click here.