What is medical transcription?

Medical transcription is the process of manually converting medical dictation into a text format. A professional who has medical knowledge and is aware of the language nuances listens to the recordings by a nurse, doctor, or any other medical practitioner and transcribes it into a written format known as medical transcripts. Medical transcription includes transcribing lab reports, patient charts, medical history, physician reports, emergency room reports, surgery notes, operative reports, discharge summaries, rehabilitation reports, clinical summaries, and more.

What are the benefits of medical transcription?

• Phenomenal Precision: The medical transcript is free of errors in language, spelling, or medical jargon and terminologies. As a result, it accurately demonstrates vital medical information, patient’s history and treatment, medical findings etcetera. 
• Saves time: Medical transcription is a real-time saver. Whether a medical practitioner wants an overview of the patient’s diagnosis or the staff wants a quick reference of some important medical documents; they can simply refer the transcript to save time.
• Better patient care: The quality of healthcare patients receive, mostly depends on how well their doctor knows their medical history, treatment, and progress. Medical transcription documents the patient’s critical information, which enables the doctor to provide the best possible care to the patient.
• Essential record: A medical transcript acts as a record that can be referred to by the patients, staff, or medical practitioners in case of medical emergencies or critical documentation processes. A certified medical transcript also qualifies as a legal document to claim medical insurance benefits.
• Accessibility to critical information: It is a time-consuming process to listen to the entire audio file only get some specific medical information. The transcript contains all the information in the text form. Thus, it becomes easy to access the information quickly; it can also be marked or highlighted for future reference. 

Top seven reasons to outsource medical transcription service

• Better quality: The medical transcripts must be highly accurate, containing the appropriate phrases, words, spelling, and medical terminologies. In addition, they must be free of language and grammatical errors. Thus, a professional medical transcription service provider ensures clear, concise, and high-quality transcription.
• Improves staff productivity: Transcription is a tedious and time-intensive process and a task best left to the professionals. So, when you outsource medical transcription work, the in-house staff can be employed for other crucial activities. They can invest their time and effort in better projects improving efficiency and productivity.
• Cost savings: You need not allocate costs for training and educating an in-house staff to avail transcription services. Today, most transcription service providers deliver top-quality medical services at competitive prices with multiple bespoke features. Thus, it helps you save costs as you only pay for the service you avail.
• Data security: The transcribers assigned by the medical transcription service provider are HIPAA-aware trained to carefully handle all personally Identifiable Information (PII). You can be sure of data security and confidentiality of the patient’s history and information.
• On-time delivery: The transcription service providers are often sensitive about the client’s timelines, particularly while delivering medical transcripts. They know the importance of submitting the transcripts on time, deadline non-adherence might negatively impact the course of a patient’s treatment. Thus, you can be sure of the timely delivery of the service.
• Subject-matter expertise: To deliver medical transcripts that are highly accurate and have the correct medical terminologies, it is essential to assign the right expert with the extensive knowledge and experience required to deliver high-quality transcription. For instance, an audio file on Neurology must be transcribed by an MD or Ph.D. of the same specialty.
• Formats galore: The medical transcription service providers accept and deliver files in your preferred formats. Thus, you are spared the hassle of submitting the files in specific formats.

What should you look for in a medical transcription service provider?

Ideally, the medical transcription service provider must have the following features.

• HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act)- compliant medical transcription service. It indicates that the service provider takes the mandatory measures to manage the healthcare information and data safely.
• The medical transcription service provider must have a multi-level quality check system to ensure they deliver superior quality of medical transcripts sans errors.
• The medical transcription service provider must assure after-sales support. You should be able to reach out to your provider with queries and receive swift resolutions.

Medical transcription is a highly intricate process. One simple mistake can disrupt the quality of a patient’s treatment. Thus, always ensure you trust in a medical transcription service provider who is reputed for efficiency and delivering a high-quality medical transcription service.