Medical transcription outsourcing: Creating documentation that follows a logical sequence

Much has been said about the need for documenting the healthcare process in a manner that is legible, complete, clear, consistent, precise, reliable and timely. The purpose of this document is primarily to throw light on the process of care, including the demographics, the findings of the physical examination, the diagnoses, treatments, tests (if any), procedures (if any), and the drugs/therapy prescribed etc.  The other equally important purposes of the patient medical record include coding & billing and providing evidential support in case of litigation. Therefore it becomes very important to evaluate the method of documentation based on these criteria. 

With the nationwide move towards an electronic healthcare system, there increasingly have been a lot of changes in the approach to healthcare documentation.  Options like point and click entry by the healthcare professional at the point of care, using front-end speech recognition software etc have been touted as options for creating patient medical records. Not only do they have disadvantages like inability to capture the narrative portion of the patient medical record, having an adverse effect on the productivity of healthcare professionals, failing to create individualistic patient medical records, curbing the diagnostic process, not meeting acceptable accuracy levels (in case of speech recognition software) but these methods also do not meet the purpose of documentation.

Medical transcription, the process of converting the dictation of the patient- healthcare professional encounter into text format, not only produces accurate, timely, secure and cost-effective patient medical records but also creates documentation that follows logical sequence, helping fulfill the purpose of healthcare documentation. As medical transcription is a process that requires intense focus in terms of the right team, the right process and the right technology, outsourcing medical transcription to a professional medical transcription service provider has been found to be an effective, efficient and economical solution.

Some of the salient features of services provided by outsourced medical transcription services are:

• Enhancing workflow of healthcare professionals and support staff: Outsourced medical transcription service providers have an innate understanding of the functioning of healthcare facilities and healthcare professionals. This enables them to provide services that enhance the workflow of healthcare professionals and other staff. Options like providing dictation as an option to capture the details of the patient encounter, option to retain familiar modes of dictation, automatic upload of dictation for transcription, document delivery customized to suit the healthcare professionals’ needs help in enhancing the workflow of healthcare professionals and other support staff.

• Improve productivity: Outsourced medical transcription services help improve productivity of healthcare professionals by essentially allowing them to focus on the patients rather than on the process of creating patient medical records. Outsourced medical transcription services also help improve productivity of healthcare professionals by providing editing and proofreading services of speech recognition software created transcripts.

• Savings on resources: Outsourcing medical transcription helps healthcare professionals and healthcare facilities save on costs and resources substantially. Not only does outsourcing medical transcription save on the actual cost of transcription, but also helps in saving various resources.

It can be concluded that teaming with a technologically savvy and professional medical transcription service provider not only ensures creating documentation with a logical sequence but can also help in adopting EMR/ EHR using HL7 interface.

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.