Best 7 Tips For Medical Transcription Services 2022

With the utmost challenge in speed and accuracy, medical transcription is one of the most promising and highly rewarding jobs in the healthcare industry. 

Medical transcription has been at the forefront of health care for the last few decades. Due to this reason, many transcribers are highly proficient in what they do.

Many a time, it is a humongous task in the medical industry and requires a great level of expertise to master this craft.

Mostly, audio transcription services are expected to be delivered quickly without having the benefit of working comfortably at your home. You have a quick turnaround time which could keep you on your toes all the time. 

To maintain high standards in medical transcription and to make sure that you never fall behind others in medical transcription services, we have curated some tips that could be really beneficial to you. This will help you find the right medical transcription services.

These tips that are mentioned below will help you a great deal in finding the perfect medical transcription service. 

Nowadays plenty of translation services in Singapore offers medical transcription services.

1. Accuracy Should Be Your Priority

Accuracy should be your priority over the rest!

You need to make sure that the company has a good history of churning out accurate data. Also, get to know whether their work has been greatly appreciated by the clients.

There are plenty of medical transcription services that have had a bad history of giving inaccurate poor data. It will have a disastrous impact on the medical analysis of the patient which may even cost their life. 

The consequences are much more than what you may anticipate.

The company can be sued for its poor quality of work and the license to operate can be easily revoked.

2. See If They Are Flexible

See if the company is flexible and not very stringent.

At times, you may want the work really fast. So you need to analyze whether the company is flexible enough to alter the submission dates.

If you have missed out on some important information about the patient, you should be able to apprise them immediately without any qualms. 

A designated person should be always in touch with you and the working relationship should be good and effective.

Having a highly flexible company can do wonders!

3. Pricing

Yes, pricing is one of the most important factors!

The pricing models of medical transcription services are highly competitive and mostly include the use of Visual Black Characters (VBC’s). 

Mostly, the medical transcription companies charge by the line. Some charge for every hour or by the keystroke. 

The complexity and volume of the work are taken into consideration and a pricing method is put in place.

To see if the pricing works for you, you need to contact the sales department of the company and check their rates. Some charge based on the 24-hour turnaround, expedited turnaround, and services based on the preferred EMR system.

So always have an idea about the pricing before you approach them!

4. Security & Privacy Of Data

It is very crucial to go for medical transcription services that offer good security and privacy to your data.

Here, you are giving away the details of patients and you are expected to keep it highly confidential. Therefore, the companies offering medical transcription services should be highly professional and ready to maintain confidentiality. This is of utmost importance and you should never take this aspect lightly. 

A professional company that offers transcription services will maintain the confidentiality of its clients.

By establishing this trust you can go ahead to give all your projects in the future.

5. Check Out The Reviews

There is no scope to make mistakes in this profession! 

You have to be really careful in selecting the right company that offers you medical transcription services.

In order to understand if the company is worth the work you provide them with, always check the company’s review on several websites that are highly reliable. If there are thousands of reviews talking about the wonderful and efficient service of the company then you know you needn’t be scared of anything.  

6. Efficient Enquiry Response

When you approach a company for medical transcription services you want them to provide you with answers that clarify all your doubts and queries.

If they are quick in their response and answer all your doubts with absolute clarity, you know they are highly professional. 

You wouldn’t want to splurge on a service that is not responsive and do not have clarity on their work processes.

If you decide to give them your project then you do not have any guarantee on the output. It may end up being such a disaster.

7. Website Quality

Let’s agree that we don’t judge a book by its cover! But here you will have to judge the website quality.

This is because some websites will help you understand if the company offers a plethora of services or not. It will also give you an idea about their broad range of medical transcription clients and the success rate at it.

Also, in most professional websites, you will have a section for online inquiry and they reach out to you quickly

Checking out the quality of the company will take you a long way because you need to avoid critical errors in this profession.

So always invest some time in reviewing and understanding the quality of the company through the website. If they are not up to the mark, you’ll be able to find it out. This will save your time and effort! 

There are scenarios where some companies have made mistakes with the patient’s information such as demographics and age in the past, you don’t want to make that mistake, do you?

So keep researching and go for the best medical transcription service that will make your life much easier. 

Additional 3 Tips That May Be Handy

1. Provide The Company A Sample Work

By providing sample data you know how the company performs. It will help you understand whether their service is really strong or not. Also, you will get to know if they have traveled the extra mile to give some additional information about the patient.

Extra information is always going to be useful. This is beneficial especially when there are accurate details on defined dosage. By doing so, the pharmacist will be able to provide the right medication and the life of the patient is made much easier and more stress-free. 

If there are some grammatical errors and other mishaps you know you do not have to give your major chunk to this company that is really poor in terms of its performance. 

2. See If The Company Has Professional Transcriptionists

Plenty of accredited organizations provides certifications and training programs for enhancing and improving medical transcription skills. They will teach you to minimize medical transcription errors. 

It will always be useful if you know the medical transcriptionists employed in the company have these certifications.

Some courses from accredited universities will help medical transcriptionists gain expertise in medical terminologies, anatomy, physiology, English grammar, and composition. 

So always check if the medical transcriptionists are professionally qualified! 

3. Set Clear Guidelines

Before you hand over your work to an agency or a company you need to make sure that the guidelines are clearly instructed. Having poor communication with them can result in poor output that may even lead to grave legal complications. So always have a contract in place before your project is handed over to them.

What is Medical Transcription And Why Is It Important?

When a patient visits a doctor, the medical record of the patient pertaining to the physical ailments, prescribed medicines, tests, and lab reports are recorded into an audio file. It is the duty of the medical transcriptionist to transcribe these audio files while maintaining accuracy. 

Such files are always accessed by doctors, nurses, and health practitioners. So these documents are very crucial and important in the medical field. It is a strong foundation in providing good care and high-quality treatments to patients in the future.

There are plenty of translation services in the UK that are offering successful and high-quality medical transcription services.

Importance Of Medical Transcriptions 

1.  Acts As A Reference For Physicians

It helps the doctors considerably in knowing the medical history of the patient. For future patient visits, the doctors can depend on these documents and assess the patient accordingly. The present ailments can be diagnosed easily and any mishaps can be quickly eliminated. This will help exponentially in providing good effective treatments for the patients. 

2. Enhances Communication Between Doctors

A patient suffering from multiple problems will have to be examined by doctors from different disciplines. In such scenarios, several doctors will have to conduct a thorough investigation and they will have to communicate amongst themselves to give a proper diagnosis. So having a good patient record will help them have effective and great communication.

3. Guide For Nurses

To provide good healthcare to the patients, having a record of the patients is gonna help nurses and other healthcare practitioners immensely.

They will be able to render good and wonderful care to the patients when they have substantial data on the patient’s ailments and diseases. It will make them stay alert whenever required and can help them conduct frequent lab blood tests in order to prescribe accurate dosage.

4. To Bill Insurance Companies

The transcribed medical records need to be sent to insurance companies to bill them. So highly proficient medical transcriptions are mandatory to get the reimbursements and claims. So be very careful not to make any mistakes here!

5. Necessary For Legal Conflicts

The law requires you to maintain medical records. So a medical transcriptionist needs to be hired to do the needful and in scenarios where legal conflicts have to be battled, medical transcriptions are one of the most reliable pieces of evidence taken into consideration by the court. 

The above-cited reasons will help you understand greatly why medical transcriptions are so important in the medical field. It is a database and tracks the healthcare facility with ease. Nowadays there are many transcription companies that provide good quality medical transcriptionists. They also pay the transcriptionist a hefty amount for the service rendered by them. 

Also, needless to say, there are several complaints around the globe against some medical transcriptionists. Even though the pay is good, there are several common complaints from main organizations against medical transcriptionists. Make sure you don’t make a black mark in your career. 

In order to prevent that we have listed out 5 things that have to be taken care of by a medical transcriptionist. 

5 Things To Be Taken Care By Medical Transcriptionists

1. Confidentiality

Confidentiality is really crucial and you need to take care of it really well. It is the duty of the transcriptionist to abide by the confidentiality agreement. You cannot disclose the details of the patient to your close friends, family, or relatives. This is to avoid any potential lawsuits and to protect the identity and privacy of the patient.

2. Be Highly Efficient

Like we have mentioned before, medical transcriptionists should be quick and work around the turnaround time to their full potential. Most of the time, the reports are required immediately so you cannot laze around and take your sweet time to get back with the reports.

The hospitals have to incorporate these reports in the patient’s charts and this process could be prolonged if you take an eternity to finish the transcriptions. Make sure you are proactive and complete the transcriptions on time.  

3. Never Submit Incomplete Reports

Every report should be completed with the physician’s reports and notes. This has to be mandatorily filled for billing. So when you forget to fill in any important information this can result in a hassle and too much confusion at the hospital. This will result in the report being sent back repeatedly to you and it will lead to too many complications (more than what you can ever imagine). You do not want to cause any hindrance to the patient who is seeking absolute care from the doctors and healthcare providers. So always be careful and vigilant. 

4. Charge Accordingly

Yes, it is always good to make your pockets hefty and heavy. But not at the cost of your job! This is because there are many complaints from hospital administrations complaining about the exorbitant rate charged by medical transcriptionists. Despite the high amount charged most of them are inefficient and submit incomplete reports which have irked the hospitals. Due to this reason, many have outsourced their work to other cheaper countries. You don’t want to lose a job that’s highly rewarding, do you?

5. Be Careful When You Sign Any Contract

When you sign a contract with any outside agency you are trapped in it. At times, without your knowledge, they would even alter the clauses on the contract. This happens generally with the submission deadlines. In such cases, you will not be able to make changes or edits to your reports. Therefore, make sure that you read the entire contract before signing it. Also, talk to the concerned people about the clauses you will have to adhere to. It is always better to keep your doubts at bay. You will need to work peacefully without having any qualms and the best way for it is to be transparent with the employer. 

The Future Of Medical Transcription

There is a steady decline in the demand for medical transcription services due to the rising technology. But still, there are numerous fields that require transcription services. After all, it is a profession that has been present since ancient times. 

The kings and nobles who ruled us used to hire people to jot down their speeches as they spoke. Gradually, with the advent of typewriters, transcription took another turn, and now with digital innovations, it has paved way for a whole new level of service like never before. 

Demand For Medical Transcription

The IT revolution is in full force throughout the globe and so is the demand for medical transcriptionists! This revolution has been able to generate many employment opportunities amidst the pandemic and increase the industry revenue annually in many countries.  Some translation services in Malaysia have become really successful in providing medical transcription services. 

There is a sudden rise in medical transcription jobs worldwide. So there are also many major pharma companies offering medical transcription training to their employers.

There are plenty of graduates who are willing to take up a career in transcriptions such as call transcription, legal transcription, medical transcription, interview transcription services, etc.  After intensive training, they can mark their career as professionals in the field. The training includes Americanism, English grammar, phonetics, medical terminologies, and computer skills. 

If one needs to be successful then he/she has to work really hard and get fluent in the medical language. If you have a medical background it gets even easier. Nowadays there are also some doctors in the medical transcription field and they are very successful in this field. So if you have the right passion and knowledge then you can climb the ladder easily. 

Technology is evolving day by day and many believe that due to the same reason transcribers will find it difficult in the future to find good clients.

A study conducted in the US has claimed that medical transcription jobs are less in demand due to the rise of speech recognition software.  But, how much ever you rely on software, certain lingo and accents cannot be correctly gauged by such software. So in such scenarios, we already know that nothing can get more efficient and authentic than our human ears. Accuracy is the most important factor in medical transcriptions, so only a human effort can save grace. 

Let’s also check out the changes in the medical transcription field when compared to a decade ago

1. Voice Recognition Software

To streamline the workflow of medical practitioners voice recognition software is a great add-on in this field. It has gained popularity like never before.

Great software can increase the productivity of doctors. 

The software helps them dictate medical records without the help of any medical transcriptionists. Some even help them open the file records of the patients automatically without any difficulty. This helps the physicians immensely in reducing their workload and taking care of the patients.

2. Amazing Automation In The Field

Now there are quite a lot of developments in the healthcare field. Some technology helps in recording and updating data into a cloud-based system. This can be easily accessed by doctors around the globe.

It also helps the medical transcriptionists considerably in automating information between different platforms and staff.

This is a good development because you can ensure the best and quality service to the patients. 

3. Advanced Reporting Techniques

There are plenty of devices that have helped us replace recorders now.!

Many medical practitioners use web-based applications which have built-in speech recognition and memory storage systems. The use of such technology has greatly driven the growth of medical transcription services.

4. New Documentation Formats

Based on the guidelines provided by electronic health records, the medical transcription industry is slowly getting rid of word documents.

The new format has paved the way for many streamlined processes such as dropdowns, structured templates, point and click fields, etc. So now every data recording is more organized and systematic. 

4. Outsourcing Is On The Rise

To save costs there is a rapid rise in outsourcing in the last decade. Domestic employees are expected to fix reports that have any errors or mishaps.

Outsourcing transcription services have increased in the last 10 years like never before and it has created more job opportunities worldwide and has made the work much easier for many. 

It has also resulted in the emergence of many medical transcription companies worldwide.

Being a medical transcriptionist is as exciting as it can ever get! This is a wonderful profession for people who are really passionate about the health care/medical industry. It is also a great career for people who hold an equal amount of passion for writing and grammar.

When you venture into medical transcriptions with a strong passion you will not find it hectic because you are always gonna be enthusiastic. In a while, you will be a pro in terms of speed, accuracy, and editing skills too.

Do not fret! If you like what you are doing, you will soon be able to conquer heights!