Medical transcription outsourcing: An in-depth analysis

In today's world, most businesses are viewing outsourcing some part of their operations as an effective solution to decrease costs and increase focus on their core business. The healthcare sector is no different. The healthcare process is complex and depends on many quality inputs to deliver services that meet high standards. Many parts of the core healthcare process cannot be outsourced; however certain portions that provide support to the healthcare process like medical transcription can be outsourced.

Medical transcription has an important role to play in the healthcare process by chronicling the patient – healthcare professional encounter in a manner that reflects accurate information. Outsourcing medical transcription adds to the efficiency of operations by ensuring turnaround time as per the healthcare professionals' requirements, security as per HIPAA & HITECH and lowering costs substantially.  However outsourcing a vital service like medical transcription can lead to doubts and misgivings.

Given below is an analysis of outsourced medical transcription services, that helps healthcare professionals and healthcare facilities recognize the possible pitfalls of outsourcing and the means of overcoming them:

• Quality: One of the main fears that healthcare professionals and healthcare facilities have regarding outsourcing medical transcription is that of substandard quality. Quality in medical transcription is the accuracy of the information captured in the patient medical record viz a viz the dictation. Substandard quality can have far reaching consequences that affect many areas of the healthcare facility operations including patient care and risk management. It becomes important for healthcare facilities to source a medical transcription service provider who can provide services consistently without compromising on quality. The training methods and the quality assurance process used by the medical transcription service provider process needs to be assessed to determine the capability of the service provider to deliver quality services as promised.

• Security: Breach of security during the medical transcription process can result in HIPAA and HITECH violation, which has far-reaching and adverse implications on the healthcare facility. To ensure that the medical transcription service provider is capable of ensuring HIPAA and HITECH compliance, the service provider needs to be assessed on the measures taken by the medical transcription service provider to secure technology, infrastructure, people and processes.

• Turnaround time: Apart from the accuracy of the information the other most important aspect that affects the healthcare facility operations is the turnaround time. While outsourcing medical transcription it is important to source a service provider who can meet the varying turnaround time needs of healthcare professionals without adversely affecting accuracy. To assess the capability of the medical transcription service provider in meeting turnaround time committed it is important to assess them on the availability of skilled medical transcriptionists, the transcription process and the technology used by the service provider.

• Technology redundancy: The process of medical transcription has become dependent on technology to provide the necessary support for factors like convenience, turnaround time, security, flexibility and meeting statutory requirements like adoption of EMR/EHR etc. It is important to source a medical transcription service provider who can provide the necessary technological support without requiring huge capital outlay from the healthcare facilities. To assess a medical transcription service provider in this regard it is important to source a medical transcription service provider that uses advanced technology with features that are easy to use.

• Hidden costs: One of the main advantages of outsourcing medical transcription is that of enormous savings on costs. However the caution to be exercised in this regard is to ensure that there are no hidden costs. To assess a medical transcription service provider in this regard it is important to assess the billing methodology. The billing method used by the medical transcription service provider needs to be measurable, definable, verifiable, consistent, fair and honest. 

It can be seen that though outsourcing medical transcription can lead to certain costs if done improperly, these impediments can be overcome by following a process of assessing the medical transcription service provider on each of these critical aspects.

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.