Medical transcription: A case study for outsourcing

Dr.Williams, 37, was based in New Jersey in an upscale neighborhood. He was a general physician and had a well-established practice. He had a small clinic right next to his home, a staff of two, a nurse and a receptionist cum secretary. He also had a part time accountant who took care of filing reimbursement forms, bank work and tax filing.

The nurse, Sarah would help him with initial information collection like patient name, social security number, details of the healthcare plan, demographics and assisted him while examining patients, administering injections, checking blood pressure etc. The receptionist/secretary Jane was in charge of scheduling patients, handling patients when they came in and transcribing the doctors notes once he had finished dictating his notes.  

Dr.Williams found that he was constantly juggling things, and he could never find the information he wanted on time. He could not actually find fault with Jane as she seemed to be overloaded with work. She constantly seemed to be juggling phone calls, people in the reception, typing out files and maintaining the filing system. He was also informed by Robert the accountant that his fund flow was low, as filing for claims seemed to take an inordinate time, owing to the fact that he could never find information on time.

Dr.Williams would observe whenever there was an additional influx of patients he would receive reports as late as seven days including for those patients for whom he had ordered further tests. This would hinder him from making the appropriate treatment plans. He would find himself relying on scribbled notes, his own memory and the inputs provided by his nurse. And one day he was stunned to observe a patient craning her neck to try and read from the computer trying to view what Jane had typed. When he looked at the screen himself, he was flabbergasted to observe it was a file about a well-known patient of his who was having some rather embarrassing health problems.

He would also find that he had lesser time to spend with his family due to the fact that an inordinate amount of his time was spent looking for information in the patient records and then correcting wrong entries. He would question Jane about it only to be told that she only had so much time to do everything. Sometimes he would find that whole tapes of his recordings had been misplaced and therefore big chunks of information would be missing from Patient records, sometimes entire files would be missing.

He tried to outsource the excess work of transcription to an independent contractor (IC) and soon found that the rates were high and he had to spend a lot of time explaining to the IC what he ‘actually’ wanted. He also was not assured of uninterrupted services during weekends and Holidays. In addition, more time was spent on coordinating the files transcribed by his secretary and those transcribed by the IC.

And when claims were filed for reimbursement, he would find that it was very difficult to bill the patient for the rejected amount of the claim as too much time had passed since the patient’s visit.

One day he got in touch with TransDyne (www.transdyne.com), a full service medical transcription provider. The people at TransDyne heard his office woes and offered to take care of his medical transcription needs. He was not sure but decided to listen to their offer. TransDyne offered him a medical transcription plan with the following benefits:

• He could retain his current mode of dictation
• Transcribed files would be returned with a turnaround time of 24 hours. If he required STAT files sooner, they could be returned within 4-12 hours.
• The files would have a guaranteed accuracy of above 99%
• All his weekend and holiday transcription work would be covered
• He would be provided with the benefits of an online system, which would help him trace his dictations and transcribed documents easily. His dictations would be uploaded automatically and he would have the options of printing finished documents automatically, if required
• The information would be completely secure
• The cost per line of transcription would be 10 cents per 65-character line
• Any specific formats and templates he wanted could be incorporated
• Medical transcriptionists who were specifically trained in his specialty would transcribe his files
• TransDyne had the ability to transmit information from the transcribed files into an EMR system if required
• TransDyne would offer him a free trial period to enjoy their services before deciding to sign with them
• He could talk to TransDyne’s customers who had benefited from similar services

Dr.Williams checked with a couple of satisfied customers and decided to avail a free trial of TransDyne’s medical transcription services. He was pleasantly surprised at how easy and convenient it was.  In case he or his staff had any queries TransDyne would attend to them immediately. He was thrilled to see that his medical transcription costs had come down by nearly 50%. Information was available on time and was captured accurately. The technology features offered by TransDyne made life easier, by making it easy to locate any information. He was also happy to observe that the entire process was secure. Dr. Williams decided to sign a contract with TransDyne to avail their services

In the next few weeks, Robert informed him that his funds flow had improved and reimbursements were happening faster because they were now able to file claims much sooner than they were doing earlier

To avail the advantages of outsourced medical transcription services by TransDyne click here or call (866)-290-0301

Medical transcription: Availing outsourced services

Medical transcription is a service; thereby the usual criteria of evaluation for making a purchase are not sufficient. Usually a purchase decision would involve evaluating criteria like Product/service, price, channels of availability and the promotional offers available along with purchase. Let us evaluate how they apply to availing medical transcription services:

Service: In case of services like medical transcription the dimensions of the service would be defined by:

• Flexibility of service: TransDyne offers medical transcription solutions that are tailor made to suit the need of every healthcare facility, be it a single doctor practice or a huge hospital offering numerous specialties.
• Security of the service: TransDyne realizes that the security of confidential patient information is an important aspect of medical transcription services. Measures are taken to ensure that processes, people and infrastructure are HIPAA compliant.
• Turnaround time of the service: TransDyne understands that medical transcription is a critical service both for providing quality care as well as speeding up the receivables cycle, that is why TransDyne offers a guaranteed turnaround time of 24 hours, with an option of 4-12 hours for STAT reports.

Price: Defining the price of services is a really tricky issue and would involve defining the measurement parameters of service. In case of medical transcription it the measurement parameters for the service could be defined in terms of

1. Minute
2. Page
3. Report
4. Gross lines
5. Character line
6. Visible black character

TransDyne uses the character line method of billing, which ensures that the healthcare facility gets a fair and reasonable price for the services rendered

 

Channels of availability: In case of a service like medical transcription this would mean sources providing transcription like in-house employees, independent contractors, or a medical transcription service provider

 

TransDyne is professional medical transcription service provider that specializes in providing medical transcription services.

 

Promotion: Promotional offers that add to medical transcription services like free recorders etc. also affect the purchase decision

 

TransDyne offers promotional offers from time to time, which are extremely attractive and add value to the service provided.

 

The above criteria are generally considered adequate for the purchase decision involving a physical product. However while evaluating a service like medical transcription further assessment is needed based on the following criteria:

 

Process: The quality of medical transcription service also needs to be assessed on the basis of the process used for providing the service. In case of medical transcription it could involve assessing the process on the basis of:

1. Quality process: TransDyne ensures quality by adopting a four level quality check of Medical Transcriptionist, language proofreader, unit in charge and finally by our Quality Assurance (QA) team which tries to minimize errors before returning the finished reports.
2. Security measures taken to ensure HIPAA compliance: TransDyne ensures Data security of Medical Transcription by incorporating security measures like 128-bit data encryption, multi-tiered application architecture, design level security, safeguards, firewall protected networks, sterilized e-mail servers, denial of access procedure and multi modal alerts.

People: In any service, and particularly a service as crucial as medical transcription, the quality of the people providing the service play a very important part in the quality of service. Evaluating the people involved in the service of medical transcription can be done by evaluating:

1. Training methods: TransDyne goes through a rigorous process of selection to recruit the best talent. Then the medical transcriptionists are trained on one or two areas of specialty ensuring that they are domain experts. This ensures the quality and turnaround time are maintained at the highest levels.
2. Whether transcription is done in-house or through other means: TransDyne believes in executing all the medical transcription work in-house.

Physical evidence: There is no better method of assessing a service than by experiencing a sample of the service before signing the contract.

TransDyne offers a free trial of their services for a limited time period.

In order to make the right decision regarding medical transcription services and to know more about TransDyne advantages click here

Medical transcription: Outsourcing can reduce the information technology burden of the healthcare facility

The success of any organization lies in being able to concentrate on the core business and outsource all other activities that are not part of the core business. The core business of a healthcare facility is that of providing quality healthcare. All other activities are support functions. They play an important role in achieving the core objective, but may not be part of the core competency of the healthcare facility

One such activity is medical transcription. Medical transcription is the process of documenting the patient-healthcare professional encounter.

What is the importance of medical transcription in the healthcare process?

Medical transcription plays an important part in the following:

• Patient treatment
• Permanent Patient records
• Referrals to other doctors
• Evidence in case of malpractice suits
• Coding, billing and insurance claims
• Satisfaction of regulatory norms

One can see that medical transcription plays a very important role in major areas of healthcare like quality of care, diagnosis and in the receivables cycle.

What role does Information Technology (IT) play in Medical transcription?

With the evolution of medical transcription from the manual to the virtual world, Information Technology plays a very important role at every stage of medical transcription like:

• Collections of patient-healthcare professional encounter data.
• Transmission of data to the medical transcriptionists
• The transcription process
• Transmission of transcribed files to the healthcare professionals
• Archiving of files for future reference
• Integration with EMR systems.

The whole process of medical transcription needs Information technology at every stage to make the process quicker and secure. Executing medical transcription in-house would require that the healthcare facility have massive investment in Information technology to enable all these functions. It would involve investments in servers for uploading dictation, secure file transfer protocols to distribute work to and collect work from medical transcriptionists, distribution network for report distribution and powerful archiving to trace dictations, work-in-progress and finished transcripts.

The simple step of outsourcing medical transcription needs to a technology savvy medical transcription service provider can eliminate the total burden of investment in Information technology towards medical transcription. These valuable resources could then be put to better use

 

TransDyne a leading name in medical transcription believes that technology needs to be advanced so that the service provided is of the best standard, but should be simple to enable ease of use for healthcare professionals

 

Some of the features of the software and tools used by TransDyne are as follows:

 

Smart upload: TransDyne offers doctors the choice of using modes of dictation they are already comfortable with. Then these files are uploaded to the servers to be made available for transcription. Smart upload enables transfer of dictation files from the healthcare facility’s server to TransDyne’s server by checking for new dictations at pre-fixed intervals

 

Web Delivery: TransDyne’s web delivery system tackles all issues related with tracking dictations, receiving documents and finding old files from the archives

 

Smart Delivery: Smart delivery is an automated program that addresses the automatic downloads, saving files and printing needs of a healthcare facility

 

HL7 integration: TransDyne can configure and send healthcare information as HL7 messages to the client’s EMR with no additional costs

 

By using the right technology TransDyne provides medical transcription with benefits like:

• Accuracy of above 99%
• Turnaround time of 24 hours with an option of 4-12 hours for STAT files
• Secure channels for data transmission, ensuring HIPAA compliance
• Fair and verifiable pricing

To avail comprehensive medical transcription services from TransDyne, click here

Medical transcription outsourcing: Helps make the organization structure leaner

Medical transcription is the process of creating records of the patient-healthcare professional encounter. It is a non-profit making but essential part of the healthcare process. It is considered to be one of the cost heads.

The aim of most healthcare facilities is to reduce the cost of medical transcription as much as possible. Outsourcing medical transcription helps reduce costs both directly and indirectly.

How does outsourcing medical transcription reduce direct costs?

Outsourcing medical transcription reduces direct costs by reducing the following cost heads:

• 
  Reduce the cost of medical transcriptionist staff on the rolls: One of the main contributors to the cost of medical transcription in-house is the need to maintain the manpower to execute the work. Outsourcing medical transcription needs can bring down not only the salaries paid to the medical transcriptionist but also bring down other costs like taxes, benefits like insurance, down time when work is slow, overtime payments, the cost of weekend and holiday transcription etc.
• Bring down the cost per line of transcription: Outsourcing medical transcription ensures that the healthcare facility ends up paying very less per line of transcription due to benefits like economies of scale, lower cost of living at the outsourcing company location, and the benefits of best practices adopted by the service provider.
• Reduce the cost of medical transcription equipment: For medical transcription to be executed in-house the healthcare facility has to invest in medical transcription equipment like computers, servers, earphones, foot pedals etc. These expenses are eliminated with the outsourcing option.

How does outsourcing medical transcription reduce indirect costs?

Outsourcing medical transcription reduces indirect costs by reducing the following cost heads:

• Reduce the cost of management resources: Managing medical transcription in-house would involve allocation of management staff for activities like recruitment, training, supervision of medical transcription work. By outsourcing medical transcription, management expenses towards managing medical transcription in-house would be dramatically reduced.
• Reduce the cost of utilities: Utilities like power, water, stationery, consumables etc. add to the cost of medical transcription in-house. Outsourcing medical transcription would eliminate all these costs.
• Reduce the cost of real estate: Executing medical transcription in-house would mean allocating space for this purpose. This cost of real estate would add to the cost of transcription. Outsourcing medical transcription would totally eliminate this cost heads

Outsourcing medical transcription needs would make the organization structure leaner by eliminating the need to maintain a huge staff on the rolls, while at the same time bringing down the cost of transcription dramatically. It allows the healthcare facility to take advantage of opportunity costs which would have been lost by allocating essential resources to in-house transcription like investments in capital equipment, space allocation, management resources etc.

Outsourcing medical transcription to TransDyne helps not only eliminate direct and indirect costs of in-house transcription, it also offers advantages like:

• Accuracy level of above 99%
• Turnaround time of 24 hours, with an option of 4-12 hours turnaround time for STAT reports
• Data transmission through secure, HIPAA and HITECH compliant channels
• Technology that enables easy uploads and downloads, and offers powerful archival facilities.
• Familiar and flexible modes of dictation
• HL7 integration, which allows for interface with EMR systems

 

To avail advantages of outsourcing medical transcription to TransDyne, click here