Advantages of maintaining proper Medical Transcripts

Medical transcription is a form of health profession which involves conversion of voice dictated reports by doctors or other health professionals into text form. A transcriptionist records all the patient details like his condition, diagnosis, test reports and medicine prescriptions. The medical transcripts can be converted into a hard copy and filed with the patient records or can be stored in the electronic format. The transcriptionists can be an in-house employee or an outsourced professional. Through Medical Transcription services, the physicians have succeeded in reducing their documentation burden.

A transcriptionist listens to the recorded dictations made by the physicians and enters the message into written format. They also interpret abbreviations and medical jargons and prepare patient history, diagnosis report and other relevant documents. They either work under a physician or for an outsourcing company.  Nowadays more people tend to work from home as a medical transcriptionist whereby they receive the recordings and submit the medical transcripts electronically. A typical transcriptionist should possess postsecondary training and have an understanding of English grammar and should know to handle the transcription software. Many vocational schools and community colleges provide this training. They even run a certificate program and the syllabus includes medical terminology, anatomical studies, English grammar, punctuation and documentation training. Some students also receive on the job training.

The basic skills a medical transcriptionist should possess are good grammar knowledge, computer and software proficiency, healthy hearing acuity and ability to listen to long dictations. As a career advancement medical transcriptionists can be elevated as supervisors, trainers, editors or consultants.  Those with higher training can even become medical technicians or medical information administrators.

A normal function of a transcriptionist consists of the following routine:

-          Receive the recordings of the dictations made by the physicians mostly via internet.

-          Listen carefully to the dictations using their headsets.

-          Key in the text into their computers

-          Produce documents concerning the patient’s health ailment like progress notes, medicines administered, diagnosis reports, discharge summary and surgical reports.

-          Edit the documents for grammar and mistakes.

-          Compare the recording with the final draft to check for inconsistencies and to rectify them.

-          Sometimes use transcription software (which uses the voice recognition technology to convert the dictations into text) and then edit it for corrections.

-          Send back the medical transcripts back to the health care professionals and receive their feedback.

There are certification courses available for Medical transcription. They are not mandatory but will give an indication of the competency level. American Association of Medical Transcription is one such body which awards voluntary certifications. The career prospects for medical transcriptionists are on the increase and are expected to accelerate faster than any other profession.  There are two reasons for this. One is the increasing number of aging patients who require well documented medical history for further treatments. The second is the growing awareness about the advantages of maintaining proper medical documents. With medicines constantly changing and new medications and medical equipments flooding the market daily, medical Transcriptionists have to be a quick learner and keep updating themselves to provide accurate and error free medical transcripts.

Transcription is made easy by the medical transcription companies

There have been radical changes observed in the medical field across the globe. The technology evolved has been a boon to the mankind. The medical industry has advanced the use of medicines to take care of the most critical diseases too. However, medical transcription is one such segment that made its way to medicine recently but has been accepted widely. Medical transcription is the process where the dictations by the doctors or the medical experts are transcribed into text reports which are used for further treatment of the patients. The medical transcription companies are the ones who offer services of doing the entire transcription process for the physicians.

The companies are really beneficial as they save the actual cost and time of the hospitals and the clinics that goes into transcription. They are also exempted from building a separate department for the transcription process, plus the cost of training the professionals who do the transcription process. The medical transcription companies recruit experts for the process, to ensure that each and every step of the process is flawless. They take care that the report does not have any mistakes, as it can have adverse effects on the patients’ treatments. Even the transcriptionists are well trained regarding the medical terms and jargons, so that they can smoothly transcribe the report without any glitches. There has to be a great co-ordination between their hand and eyes, so as to fasten the process of transcription. The transcriptionists have to be trained to maintain the secrecy of the reports as it contains the confidential information regarding the patients.

Adding up to all such reasons the transcription is best when outsourced. With this the companies are responsible to ensure high quality of work and better turn-around factor. The reports can be received very fast depending on factors like if the company where you outsource your transcription works all round the clock or not. The faster the reports received the more patients the doctors can cater to. The companies have to be chosen depending on whether it’s a reliable one or not. Getting the transcription done is a job of responsibility and so the companies have to ensure that the right kind of staff and experts are hired.

The Medicaltranscription companies are many and have been providing services to all the major hospitals and clinics. It is observed that many people are hired and recruited for these services and the people are also paid well. These reasons cause the youth to get interested in making a career out of it. They just have to gain training in the medical background and so can easily get recruited for the transcription purposes. Medical transcriptionist is the position that most of them aim for, to get a decent pay and a respectable job. Many enthusiasts chose this direction to get involved in the medical field, if they don’t have a medical background academically. They can involve themselves with medicine with some appropriate and apt training; they do so because they have a passion to serve the people.