Professionally executed, high-quality medical transcription is vital to healthcare providers and practitioners for a variety of reasons, but is difficult to source and have confidence with the final product. Organizations frequently have debates about whether to use in-house transcriptionists or to outsource the data to transcription companies and weigh the differences in costs, delivery capabilities, and accuracy.

The scope of this article will cover the ABCs in how organizations will see great benefits from using a professional medical transcription company like TranscribeMe, which are: Accuracy and Burnout.

Table of Contents

1. Ensuring Medical Record Accuracy
2. Relieving Physician Burnout Maintaining Electronic Health Records

1. Ensuring Medical Record Accuracy

Keeping accurate medical records is a crucial requirement for healthcare providers on both the legal and professional front. Without accurate and professional printed or electronic medical records, including records on personal information and data, physical and mental conditions, medical history, and current medical care, there is increased risk for patients to be improperly or outright mistreated.

Sheila Burgess, RN, RHIA, CDIP, CHTS-CP, director of CDI at Sutherland Global Healthcare Solutions, points out that even a small typo such as “hyper” versus “hypo” in a medical record can have dire consequences. “If a patient comes into the ER unconscious, they could be emergently treated for a condition they don’t have if a physician pulls up their record and the documentation is incorrect or it’s the wrong patient’s information,” Burgess says. “That’s one thing that could be detrimental.”

On the legal front, the Federal False Claims Act requires that patient medical records be kept for 10 years. All medical procedures, treatments, care, and instructions must be documented, and all entries made are legally binding. Improper, inaccurate, or poorly managed documentation may result in serious HIPAA violations which can result in fines and a loss of reputation. Additionally, further legal, civil, or professional liability may be incurred if patients are mis-diagnosed or mistreated stemming from poorly maintained or inaccurate medical records.

At TranscribeMe, we have built a platform around a focus to deliver consistent, high quality data. For medical transcription, a robust workflow that requires medical transcriptionists to demonstrate competency with medical terminology, language, and general grammar and dialogue in order to receive access to transcription tasks.

Additionally, multiple layers of review are built in to make sure that workers are constantly checked and that data is accurately transcribed with consistency. This results in a process that delivers consistent high quality data affordably and quickly.

TranscribeMe’s medical transcription service teams are able to provide customized outputs for special writing styles or proprietary formats required by health providers regarding the transcription of their medical records.

As a company with a dedicated medical transcription division, TranscribeMe can retain such requirements in portfolios according to individual customers, and the medical teams know which styles are to be used for which providers. Sometimes the same healthcare providers may even have several different style requirements according to format: letters, diagnoses, reports, etc. The final output can be customized to your needs.

According to Health Information Management (HIM) experts, the most common errors made in medical documentation are mixed messages from a physician via misunderstood dictation or illegible handwriting; misuse of copy-paste functions in the electronic health record (EHR); incomplete or missing documentation; misplaced documentation. Errors such as these can be mitigated by the use of a trained, experienced medical transcription team.

2. Relieving Physician Burnout Maintaining Electronic Health Records

Keeping accurate medical records is a crucial requirement for healthcare providers on both the legal and professional front. Without accurate and professional printed or electronic medical records, including records on personal information and data, physical and mental conditions, medical history, and current medical care, there is increased risk for patients to be improperly or outright mistreated.

The results of two surveys conducted in 2013 and 2015 by Medscape showed the same list of causes that lead to physician burnout. The top cause was revealed as too many bureaucratic tasks, and the second as too many hours at work. Surprisingly, the fourth was increasing computerization, a factor that should seemingly help with the bureaucratic tasks and decrease work time instead of hindering them.

In a 2014 Medscape survey, 70% of physicians noted that the implementation of EHR in their practices decreased face-to-face time with patients, and 57% said that it detracted from their ability to see patients. The survey did show indications of it becoming less problematic in the future – 81% of the physicians surveyed said they are becoming more comfortable with their EHRs over time – but being more comfortable with computerization does not necessarily mean solving issues that cause burnout.

According to Medical Economics magazine’s 3rd annual Physician Burnout and Wellness Survey in 2021, physician burnout has reached a crisis point. When asked what contributed the most to their feelings of burnout, the number one answer given by physicians was too much paperwork and regulations, followed by work too many hours/poor work-life balance. These results are directly in line with the survey results obtained by Medscape seven and nine years prior, respectively.

In his article We Must Address the Causes of Burnout, L. Allen Dobson Jr., MD, FAAFP, the editor-in-chief of Medical Economics, describes how in the early years of his practice the causes of physician burnout were most often attributed to long hours, lack of work-life balance, the pressure of clinical responsibility, and the burdens of call and leadership. “Now the most cited reason in numerous studies and surveys is administrative burden (EHRs, prior approval, administrative tasks).”

Utilizing the Services of a Medical Transcription Company

By utilizing a transcription company such as TranscribeMe, providers can allocate more time to duties of greater urgency and have the peace of mind knowing their transcription needs are taken care of. Healthcare providers can simply use a recording device or mobile phone to record diagnoses, treatments, reports, schedules, and more, instead of typing out the records themselves. In this way, important medical information will be captured with minimum effort and the recordings can be forwarded for transcription by professionals of the field.

Not only is this beneficial to the physician due to medical records becoming a no-hassle process that will help to alleviate the main causes of physician burnout, patients will benefit as well because records and transcripts will be implemented quickly and professionally.

In addition, the healthcare provider can also be under less pressure in knowing that medical transcripts will ensure that key data and metrics are available in a timely manner to healthcare insurers for proper claims handling. Outsourcing transcription can also help to free up the administrative personnel in a physician’s office for higher priority tasks, thereby helping to alleviate staff burnout as well.

HIPAA-Compliant Transcription

Confidentiality requirements and the protection of personal data continue to increase as a major priority across the globe. Many countries have implemented laws and regulations that require the protection of certain types of data by anyone who is in possession of this data. However, not all medical data requires this type of protection, and not all data that does require this protection is medical data.

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) was created to “improve the portability and accountability of health insurance coverage” for employees between jobs. After it was signed into law on August 21, 1996, the US Department of Health and Human Services began creating the first HIPAA Privacy and Security Rules such as the HIPAA Privacy Rule, which came into force April 14, 2003, and the HIPAA Security Rule, which went into effect on April 21, 2005. HIPAA and its related regulations have since become an informally accepted global standard.

HIPAA requires that healthcare facilities and providers, as well as anyone with access to Protected Health Information (PHI), take serious measures to ensure the privacy and security of personal patient data. Healthcare professionals must have firm security precautions in place or face dire legal consequences.

A HIPAA-compliant transcription service such as TranscribeMe comes with multi-layer security features. Security protocols include encrypting data in-transit and at rest, limiting access to records for only essential personnel, deleting data off of our servers after a short period of time, and many others to ensure compliance is met.

Office administrative staff in a doctor’s office or clinic may find it difficult to keep up with all the complexities and details of HIPAA compliance. TranscribeMe employs staff that is specifically dedicated to meeting HIPAA requirements and restrictions. This staff continuously educate themselves on the regulatory updates, make company administrators aware of the latest developments, and write company policies, guides, and informational material to ensure that our process remains truly HIPAA compliant

Furthermore, TranscribeMe keeps control of and tracks all who have access to sensitive data. Individuals on the HIPAA medical transcription team must pass through several levels of identity verification. They are also required to sign a non-disclosure agreement (NDA), a business associate agreement (BAA), pass a HIPAA compliance exam annually, and fill out a Transcription Security Declaration form after each project verifying no HIPAA-related material was improperly copied or taken.

Increasing quality (Accuracy) and eliminating barriers to productivity (Burnout) may be the main driving force for choosing TranscribeMe to process medical records, but guaranteeing the safety of personally identifying information in doctor-patient exchanges (Compliance) remains paramount. No matter which of these specific ABCs takes priority in your practice or facility, TranscribeMe can help take the worry out of handling medical data.

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Saving time can save lives. It is due to this simple reason that the healthcare sector stands to benefit significantly from technologically advanced transcription services. Medical professionals are often strapped for time and under pressure to stay on top of paperwork while having to see and treat patients. Add long shifts and late nights on call to the equation and we can begin to understand the high-stress nature of the job.

Medical transcription frees up valuable time for doctors and other healthcare professionals to better tend to the needs of their patients. It also removes the burden of having to manually enter data records for storage and safe-keeping of everyday functions such as:

• Medical History & Physicals
• Operative Reports
• Discharge Summaries
• Medical Research Interviews
• Consultation & Administrative Letters

Time Equals Money

In allowing more time to be spent on duties of greater urgency, medical transcription helps improve productivity as well as efficiency. Doctors and nurses equipped with a recording device or, better yet — a mobile transcription app — can easily capture key information for quick conversion to highly accurate text. 

The cost of acquiring and maintaining in-house transcription software and staff can be very costly. As hospitals and healthcare practices typically work with limited budgets, the more attractive solution to their transcription needs is outsourcing. Being able to adhere to tight turnaround requirements means transcription can also help healthcare professionals keep up with their fast-paced work environment.

Today, professional medical transcription services are widely available at competitive pricing. Beyond affordability, it’s important to consider the availability of the right expertise, technology, and certifications when deciding which service provider to sign up with.

Keeping Personal Health Information Safe

While increasing efficiency for medical professionals is the main driver behind the use of transcription services, ensuring that personal data in doctor-patient exchanges is safe-guarded is paramount. At TranscribeMe, we can guarantee the secure handling of your submitted audio-recording with our multi-layer security features.

Our highly-skilled medical transcriptionists are always vetted and required to sign a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) before starting any project. This basic first step in data security helps us to uphold HIPAA compliance. We fully adhere to HIPAA standards throughout our services. Other confidentiality protection measures include micro-tasking transcription orders, geo-location, and geo-fencing access permissions.

Combining the Best of Man and Machine

We pride ourselves on bringing together the powerful skills of our talented global transcriptionist community with the most up-to-date automatic speech recognition (ASR) technology. It is this winning combination that allows us to deliver highly accurate results on time; keeping both new and returning customers greatly satisfied with our trusted medical transcription services.

Get in touch for a custom quote tailored to your health center’s needs and join the efficiency evolution taking over the medical field today!

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The medical field is one of the main industries that stands to significantly benefit from specialized professional transcription services. It all comes down to the time and money that can be spared with a high-pressure profession that often finds staff working overtime due to the demanding nature of the job.

In outsourcing the routine, yet important task of transcribing everyday duties, healthcare practices can enjoy a myriad of associated advantages. Texts like patient discharge summaries, medical histories or research interviews can all be handed over to a transcription service, and valuable staff time can be freed up immediately. Doing this can mean immediate improvements in the workplace; from lower staff turnover and burnout rates, to higher productivity and increased job satisfaction.

That said, in order to get the most out of a medical transcription service, it is paramount to ensure it adheres to the highest level of confidentiality. At TranscribeMe, we take information security very seriously and enforce the following measures to guarantee our work complies with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA):

1.  Infrastructure and Network Security

Our servers can be found within the secure walls of Microsoft Azure data centers that employ the most advanced techniques to prevent both physical and online intrusion. These constantly monitored facilities are also ISO certified and maintained around the clock with the latest security updates. Working with these world renowned data centers provides us with the complete uptime reliability for our services.

2. Micro-Tasking and Confidentiality

As an extra measure to ensure confidentiality, we have developed a custom micro-tasking algorithm to breakdown audio or video files into snippets for random assigning to our transcribers. In this way, no one transcriber will have more than a fraction of a single job nor can they access the entire job or identify the client.

3. Quality-Assurance Security Measures

All of the content uploaded to and exchanged with our work delivery platform is encrypted for additional security. In fact, we use the same algorithms as those applied to safeguard financial data in online banking transactions. Through the use of our specialized platform, transcribers have access to our most advanced transcription and translation tools without permitting any downloading or storage of data offline. Before assigning any jobs, our transcribers must first have passed a series of tests for quality and efficiency in advance.

4. Geo-Location and Fencing

We work with a number of clients that have strict requirements for their confidential information to remain within their countries’ borders. This is often the case for most customers located in the UK, Canada or Australia. We are able to accommodate these needs thanks to geo-location, which can limit the human and machine-based processing of content to users within a pre-specified geographical location. Geo-fencing provides the added benefit of filtering a job assignment to transcribers with the required technical expertise.

5. Advanced Enterprise Confidentiality

Where extra sensitive information is involved, we can provide a background-check service for all the employees on the assigned project and also share their resumes with the client. Under these circumstances, we would require advance planning to be able to carry out these individual security checks prior to starting any work. Should the signing of a non-disclosure agreement or any other associated legal contract be necessary, our transcribers are familiar with the process and can accommodate accordingly.

6. Keeping it In-House When and Where Necessary

Sometimes information can be too sensitive to share with any external employees even if they’ve cleared our own security checks. Should this be the case, our customers always have the ability to exclusively process their own content in-house. Their staff will have access to all the tools made available through our secure online platform, including partial support using advanced speech recognition algorithms.

7. HIPAA Compliance

Fully trained medical transcriptionists are always subject to the business associate requirements per HIPAA’s privacy legislation. This, in turn, means that we are subject to that same requirement because our transcribers perform a function on behalf of healthcare providers which includes the disclosure and handling of Personal Health Information (PHI).

As such, they are strictly prohibited from using or sharing PHI in any manner that could violate the privacy rule. Moreover, these security standards apply to any information that is digitally stored or transmitted. Wherever PHI is to be processed by a transcriber, they are required to utilize chain-of-trust agreements to fulfill their obligation to maintain the integrity and confidentiality of the information during its transmission.

With these seven security measures in place, we are able to guarantee your information will be handled with utmost care and confidentiality at TranscribeMe. Staying on top of the latest security trends and requirements helps us ensure correct HIPAA compliance while delivering highly accurate and timely results.

Interested to know more about our best-in-class medical transcription services? Reach out to our sales team with any further questions – we’d be happy to assist you!

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Outsourcing medical transcription work is far from a hot new topic in the healthcare field. When delivered quickly, accurately and within a designated timeframe, medical transcription can be equally painless and productive for many healthcare professionals – from licensed physicians to hospital executives.

Rather than taking the unnecessary time to get a foolproof, internal transcription system down, many medical practices and hospitals have looked toward the help of outsourced professional transcriptionists to address their voice to text needs that must be done correctly and in a timely, cost-effective manner. If your healthcare facility is considering making the switch to a newer, better solution, read through some of the biggest reasons to commit to an outsourced medical transcription service.

1. Minimize Labor & Management Costs

In-house medical transcription can be a laborious, budget-draining process that can leave healthcare management in a serious bind. Transcripts play such a critical role in medical documentation that it’s necessary to find a working solution that makes the most sense for each individual practice. However, hiring an experienced, full-time transcriptionist means paying for a high salary and any additional help that may be needed.

By taking advantage of an outsourced medical transcription service, you’ll effectively only pay for the transcripts being produced, and not for any of the extraneous costs that come with an in-house hire. Additionally, management will be more free to concentrate on more important priorities and leave the transcription specifics to their medical transcription partner.

2. Make Information More Accessible

There are a number of reasons to have your medical documentation transcribed, but perhaps the most important reason is the ability for the correct staff members to be able to digitally search for (and find) what they need, at any given time. Medical transcription takes recorded audio and video files and transforms the speech to searchable, easy-to-index digital text, so that information is always accessible to those that need it.

Along with greater searchability of the documentation at hand, accurate medical transcripts of patient reports, discharge summaries, medical histories, research interviews, etc allow more people to easily comprehend, view and understand – especially those who are deaf or hard of hearing.  We guarantee +98% accuracy within all of the transcription work our skilled transcriptionists produce, making it the best option for medical practices specializing in any area.

3. Obtain Accurate, Timely Reports

Choosing a medical transcription provider that employs trained medical transcriptionists is the most important step in saving time and money. We take advantage of a unique, proprietary multi-step review process of your transcribed content that ensures the absolute highest quality transcripts are delivered every time.

Blending speech technology with expert medical transcriptionists who understand your specific medical jargon, our service is able to provide the most accurate transcripts possible. Our specialists generate the most detailed transcripts in the industry, including speaker IDs and timestamps. By using these medical transcription services, professionals in the medical field can truly focus on what’s most critical about their roles — helping patients.

Get more information about our dedicated medical transcription services — reach out to a representative today!

This article was originally published on January 10, 2017.

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Medical transcription is one of the most time-saving, essential tools that experts in the healthcare industry can take advantage of day-to-day. By actively recording and dictating important notes, patient information and more, and then securely transforming the recordings into accurate, written text, medical professionals can save a lot of one of their most important assets — time.

The post HIPAA-Compliant & Secure Medical Transcription for Healthcare appeared first on TranscribeMe.

• Operative Reports
• Discharge Summaries
• Medical History & Physicals
• Biomedical Science Drafts & Theses
• Medical Research Interviews
• Consultation & Administrative Letters

Get Fast, Accurate Recall of Critical Facts

Medical transcription is a highly-skilled task that requires a lot of experience and technical know-how, and managing transcriptions in-house (or, in practice) can often leave healthcare professionals open to less stringent quality control and accuracy. Our medical transcriptionists are all fully vetted and trained to ensure fast and accurate work, and are experienced enough to understand all of the specific jargon and phrasing associated with medical transcriptions.

When you enlist the help of a medical transcription service to turn dictation into accurate text, it by nature becomes easily searchable so that any healthcare experts on the scene can quickly search for, and locate, important patient information, medical histories, reports, and other notes. With exact timestamps and custom formatting, it becomes infinitely more streamlined to recall critical facts.

Make Information Accessible

Not every patient, family member of the patient, or fellow medical professional will necessarily be able to hear and understand key notes. In order to open up the level of information accessibility, those working in healthcare can take advantage of medical transcription to make things easier for those with disabilities.

Additionally, accurate medical transcripts in digital form make it simple to share and distribute information with those who need it, providing you with a text-based way to search, view, edit or print reports digitally. After being transcribed, patient reports and medical histories can also be safely stored in a hospital or medical practice’s database for fast retrieval anytime by healthcare personnel.

Free Up Doctors & Staff

Medical professionals, hospital administrators, nurses and others’ time is best spent helping patients and making things happen efficiently behind-the-scenes. If you’re a medical professional who is tired of sitting in front of a computer screen for hours to catch up on reports or charts, outsourcing your medical transcription may be the perfect solution. And, thanks to audio dictation through mobile transcription apps, recording medical notes, reports and other information has never been easier!

Saved time and money on medical administrative paperwork is a big benefit, as well. As a physician, nurse or other kind of healthcare worker, you simply record voice notes with the smartphone app and are almost instantly ready to see the next patient or move on to the next task. Medical professionals can submit their dictation via our app or desktop Portal, and our trained medical transcription experts will finish the rest.

Get more information about our dedicated medical transcription services — reach out to a representative today!

The post The Big Benefits of Medical Transcription Services appeared first on TranscribeMe.

Looking for medical transcription for your professional healthcare requirements? We provide many dedicated, specialized transcription services for medical purposes, including accurate transcripts of:

>> Operative Reports

>> Discharge Summaries

>> Medical History & Physicals

>> Biomedical Science Drafts & Theses

>> Medical Research Interviews

>> Consultation & Administrative Letters

Learn More: https://transcribeme.com/medical-transcription

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