Medical transcription companies have dramatically changed the landscape of how patient information is processed. For hundreds of years it was simply pencil and paper. In the 1980′s the ship slow began to occur where there were options to digitize portions of a patients records. However there was not much benefit or cost savings at that time because computer memory and processing power were simply too expensive to make it a wide spread effective solution for most medical professionals.
Fast forward to the last ten years and you’ll see physicians rushing to convert to electronic medical records. There are multiple reasons for this. First there is not a true return on investment. Medical transcription companies have made it inexpensive and cost effective for a physician to hold a hand-held tablet computer or PDA and visit a patient. The software and hardware together then take that data to a sever where it is centrally stored and is accessible to a patients care team. Efficiently entering the patients information correctly the first time, and skipping redundant keying in of information has allowed a doctor’s office to become more streamlined. Doctors now need less employees performing low value data entry. There is an additional benefit that there are less errors as the information the patient care team puts directly into the software there is no middleman who could potentially fat-finger a patient record.
Another benefit medical transcription companies offer is efficiency in achieving compliance with HIPAA which is a government compliance requirement. Failure to comply with HIPPA standards can result in severe penalties that can put a physician’s office out of business. Medical transcription companies create a value added layer where by the information the patients team enters into the software is then vetted and combed over to insure that is correct. Doctors also have the option of dictating notes into a digital recorder that can capture his or her patient notes. Those notes can be sent electronically or through the mail to a medical transcription company.
The benefits are clear; extreme cost savings in the form of increased efficiency, less payroll expense for data entry for doctors, increased compliance, flexibility in accessing patient information and less physical space used to store patient records. It is no wonder that doctors offices are rushing to move to electronic medical transcription services offered by a myriad of firms. Next we will examine the common pitfalls many companies make when evaluating a medical transcription firm.
The most common mistake that is made is when a medical practice gets locked into a software package that is not interoperable with other software suites. For example many doctor’s office need to be able to have their software interface with one or more hospitals or pharmacies. The second biggest mistake is having your patient data held hostage. When patient records are locked up in particular software suite in can become expensive and complex to get it out and migrate to a different platform. That is why the leading medical transcription companies allow ‘data dumps’ where patient and practice information can be put in a universal data format that can be recognized by other manufacturer’s software. If you are evaluating a practice management software or service make sure your data will not be hostage to one vendor. The third most common mistake is not getting more than one or two quotes. Prices vary by tens of thousands of dollars between feature rich custom transcription suites to opensource patient management suites. You need a value added partner that understands the vast landscape of options available to you. If your vendor doesn’t do a detailed and thorough needs assessment that is a red flag as well and you should look elsewhere for your medical transcription partner.