As you make your way into the medical transcription field you soon realize that yours is a responsible job. And they told you that before when they said that the medical records you create are going to help run the healthcare and insurance industries smoothly. That ought to be a responsible job. The records you create have the potential to impact the safety of a patient if you aren’t too careful. So, medical transcription is such a huge responsibility. Wanna know what all goes in the transcriptionist’s checklist? Read on.

• Filter relevant medical information out and discard the irrelevant information and noise from voice recordings.

• Analyze the voice recordings in order to transcribe it into meaningful text.
• Follow up with doctors for additional information if the recordings are incomprehensible or there are gaps in the recordings.
• Analyze the transcribed text and give a logical flow and meaning to it.
• Ensure that the transcribed text is correct grammatically.
• Make sure there are absolutely no inconsistencies in the medical record.
• Check the medical record for spelling errors and make necessary changes.
• Proofread the record thoroughly before delivery of the record.
• Incorporate the changes suggested by doctors and reviewers after the review rounds.
• Ensure security and confidentiality of the medical data.
• Deliver medical records on time.
• Ensure 98 percent overall accuracy and 100 percent accuracy in terms of critical errors.

Now, this checklist points to the difficulty level of medical transcription. However, don’t let this deter you from joining the profession. Just make sure you have the potential for it and you and the job suit each other.

Many times in this blog we have said that medical transcription is not everyone’s cup of tea. It is not. What makes it difficult? Let’s find out.

Medical transcription doesn’t give you a list of eligibility requirements, making people believe that anyone can do the job. However, the profession requires a certain aptitude which is not explicitly defined. This often makes people ignore analyzing their own potential before joining the field.

The profession expects you to meet every deadline. Deadlines are meant to be sacrosanct in any field but more so in this field. You are required to turn around medical records in 24 hours. Sometimes, you may have to deliver records in a matter of a few hours.

Now, you do understand that meeting deadlines is not enough if the quality of your work is bad. The quality goals in the medical transcription work are extremely high with a required accuracy of 98 percent. And when it comes to critical errors, the profession has zero tolerance.

As a medical transcriptionist, you are required to keep updating your knowledge base. You have to spend time and effort on learning almost every day. And this makes the job difficult.

Stringent deadlines, high quality goals, incomprehensible recordings, and learning and research requirements, can put quite a lot of pressure on medical transcriptionists. This is why we say you should look into the pros and cons of the profession well before committing to the profession.

If you have any question about the medical transcription profession, feel free to ask us.

When ever challenges in medical transcription are mentioned, stringent deadlines and high quality goals top the list. The reason deadlines or quality goals become difficult is because of the interdependency of these two things. Meeting deadlines with poor quality or delivering high quality after the deadline renders your work useless. In today’s post, we will discuss the expected quality standards in medical transcription.

The Association for Healthcare Documentation Integrity (AHDI) has divided the errors in medical transcription work in three categories to standardize quality in the profession. The three categories of errors are: critical errors, major errors, and minor errors.

As the terms suggest, the critical error is the most important or critical one, the major error is less critical but still important, and the minor error is an error but not too important.

The medical transcription profession has zero tolerance when it comes to critical errors. Why? Because critical errors are the ones that can impact the safety of a patient. The medical transcriptionist, therefore, is required to achieve 100 percent accuracy with respect to critical errors. Now, what is a critical error? A critical error occurs if you put incorrect patient information, incorrect names and doses of medicines, incorrect values in test results, or incorrect test names in a medical record. Missing a part of the recorded information also amounts to a critical error.

The quality goal with respect to major errors is 98 percent accuracy. This means that you are not allowed to have more than 2 percent major errors in your medical records. Major errors are the ones that impact the integrity of the medical document. Incorrect spelling of English words and medical terms, incorrect inferences owing to incorrect verbiage, failure to comply with protocols and policies, failure to flag any missing information, and intentional flagging of wrong information cause major errors.

Minor errors are not factual errors. They are marked by the areas of improvement in the medical document. The medical transcription profession requires that you achieve 98 percent accuracy with respect to minor errors. Errors in punctuation and grammar, inconsistency of format, and typing errors not amounting to any change in the meaning of content contribute to minor errors.

AHDI suggests that a medical transcriptionist get constant feedback on his/her work so that there is no repetition of errors in his/her future work. Sound advice. What do you think?

If you are even a bit interested in becoming a medical transcriptionist, you should learn as much as possible about the medical transcription profession, including its pros and cons. There are certain facts, however, that you should know upfront even before you delve deep into whether or not you and the profession suit each other. Here is a list of six such facts.

Qualification, age, location no bar but that does not make everyone eligible to be a medical transcriptionist.

The medical transcription profession has absolutely no prerequisites but that does not mean everyone can become a medical transcriptionist. The profession expects an aptitude.

Medical transcription is not about transcription but about creating medical records.

If medical transcription were only about transcribing information, it would be like any other transcription job. However, this profession is about creating medical records that are complete, meaningful and accurate.

Quality goal in medical transcription is 100 percent in one area and 98 percent in the rest.

The profession classifies errors in three categories: critical, major and minor. A medical transcriptionist cannot afford to commit a single critical error and he/she is supposed to deliver 98 percent accuracy with respect to other errors.

The medical transcription training is what specializes you.

The profession does not expect you to possess any medical knowledge or transcription skills before your training. It is during the medical transcription training that you develop the requisite skills and become equipped with the medical knowledge.

The learning never stops in the medical transcription profession.

Yes, as a medical transcriptionist, you will keep learning throughout your career, much beyond that medical transcription training. This is because you cannot work with obsolete medical knowledge; you need to keep updating your knowledge base regularly.

Flexible hours and flexibility to work from home make medical transcription an accessible job.

Being able to choose one’s work hours and the flexibility to work from home makes it easier for a lot of people to go for medical transcription who otherwise would not be able to take up a regular job.

Keep watching this space for more news and views on medical transcription.

While we are coping to meet the expectations of a profession, it goes on developing certain skills in us. It is only much later that we discover that a certain job/profession gave us a lot to make us better professionals and individuals. The medical transcription profession, with all its easy entry and flexibility, offers us a lot. And in its requirements lie the skills it helps develop in us. Read on to find out for yourself.

The profession makes you depend on yourself. Whether you are in an office or at home, you will be working with less supervision. During the course of your job, you develop decision-making capabilities and become self-reliant.

The medical transcription profession expects you to keep yourself motivated in the long run. And this expectation, in a way, helps develop more of the self-motivational skill in you. This trait will help you never lose focus of your targets in life.

You learn to manage time better in due course. With deadlines knocking on your door every few hours, you have to manage time very well. The profession teaches you to squeeze work in tiny slots without compromising on quality. Soon, you learn to manage time well in all other aspects of your life.

Medical transcription teaches you to be patient. The stringent deadlines, the difficult recordings, and the additional rounds of reviews make the medical transcription profession an extremely demanding one. However, since you are constantly trying to strive in spite of these demands, you learn to become patient.

Medical transcription will make you a better individual, both in your professional and personal lives.

Medical transcription is a profession everybody has an opinion on. This leads to contradicting views. A medical transcription aspirant may find herself lost with so much information around, and some of the information is nothing but misinformation. In today’s post, we will respond to and address a few questions and concerns respectively.

I have a good typing speed. Can I become a medical transcriptionist?
You can become a medical transcriptionist if you have the right aptitude. An above-average typing speed will suffice. Moreover, your typing speed alone cannot make you a good medical transcriptionist. Typing is definitely not one of the primary skills of a medical transcriptionist. However, the transcriptionist’s job is to decipher the voice recordings and turn them into relevant medical records. This requires sound medical knowledge and the skill to analyze and interpret information.

Do I need to undergo the medical transcription training?
Anyone with the right aptitude can become a medical transcriptionist provided he/she undergoes proper training in medical transcription. The training equips one with medical knowledge and transcription skills.

How much money can I make as a medical transcriptionist?
According to the US Department of Labor, the mean hourly wage of a medical transcriptionist is $15.84 and the mean annual wage is $32,960. Your income depends on your proficiency and experience in the field.

What is the future of the medical transcription industry?
The medical transcription industry is one of the rarest to have emerged unscathed from the recent recession. The US Department of Labor projects that the number of medical transcription opportunities will grow at a rate of 14 percent to 2016 from what it was in 2006. This rate is more than the average rate of growth of other occupations. With the increasing and aging population, the industry is likely to see a tremendous growth in opportunities.

Hope this post helps address your concerns. Write in to you if you have more questions about medical transcription.

In the long run, it is the good medical transcriptionist who will be in demand. There are a number of factors that differentiate a good medical transcriptionist from a bad one.

A good medical transcriptionist will not commit critical errors. And if you do commit such an error, you are not just a bad transcriptionist but a fatal one. While the overall quality goal is 98 percent accuracy, the profession has zero tolerance when it comes to critical errors. And it is obvious. A careless error on your part can risk a patient’s health. And you can ruin your career with even a single error of this kind.

A good medical transcriptionist will not panic when faced with a crisis. The medical transcriptionist is required to work independently. There will be situations that will make you look out for help. Incomprehensible recordings, difficult reviewers, and many such problems can put you in a crisis situation. The key here is not to panic. You should consult seniors, your medical transcription company, and your peers for help.

A good medical transcriptionist will not let others have access to his/her work. Irrespective of where you work, in an office or at home, you cannot let anyone access any work information, even by accident. Make sure your cabinets are locked, unnecessary papers shredded, and your computer inaccessible. Don’t let your work computer be used for personal purposes by anyone, including you.

A good medical transcriptionist will not miss deadlines. Missing a deadline will not only add unnecessary pressure on you, but also make you unpopular with your client or employer. The medical transcription deadlines are sacred, and you have to make sure you meet them, every time.

A good medical transcriptionist does not flag inappropriately. At times, you may be faced with recordings that have some parts absolutely incomprehensible. Don’t assume things in such cases. Make sure you flag such instances. At the same time, don’t flag something because of your lack of interest and energy to research.

So, are you a good medical transcriptionist? You can be.

Wasn’t the voice-recognition software supposed to be a threat to the medical transcriptionist’s job? When and how did it become an aid? Well, first, let’s look at why the software was considered fit for the job.

The software recognizes voice and converts it to written words. Now, that’s what transcription is all about. So, it made sense to give the software to doctors and do away with the transcriptionist. But there was a major flaw in this line of reasoning. The medical transcriptionist doesn’t just transcribe but creates medical records. The software is not equipped to create such records.

The software needs to recognize voice in order to transcribe. That requires time and effort from the doctors. The reason medical transcription came into being was that doctors didn’t have enough time, and they didn’t have the skill to document. So how are they expected to spend time in ‘training’ the software? Now, even if they made that initial effort, the software requires them to speak clearly, preferably in a noise-free environment in order to recognize each and every word. Thus, doctors need to spend time and effort each time they use the software. This beats the whole purpose of saving their precious time.

OK, let’s assume the software was smarter and took less time and effort. That should work, right? Not quite. The results delivered by the software are far from being accurate. And the reason for this is that it cannot ‘think’ the way humans do.

Creating accurate and complete records required human intervention. And this meant the medical transcriptionist was the one editing the document created by the software. Thus, the whole point of using the software to replace the medical transcriptionist was lost. Instead, the transcriptionist started using the software as an aid to his/her work.

In spite of all the benefits of the profession, medical transcription is not easy to handle. Let’s look at why the work is challenging.

The profession has stringent deadlines. As a medical transcriptionist, you have to deal with deadlines everyday. And at times, you may have to turn around a medical record within four hours. Everyone can cope with a day or two of hard work but only the strong medical transcriptionist can manage such deadlines on a daily basis.

The quality goals in the medical transcription profession are high. The profession asks an accuracy of at least 98 percent in your work. And when it comes to critical errors, the profession has zero tolerance. Such high quality goals let only the most focused survive in the profession.

As a medical transcriptionist, one is required to study regularly. The transcriptionist has to update his/her database of medical knowledge almost everyday.

In order to make sure that the information in the medical records is correct, meaningful, and relevant, one has to spend a considerable time analyzing and researching the information. This research and analysis is not everyone’s cup of tea.

At times, the medical transcriptionist has to deal with unexpected reviews. This happens if the medical information is complex or if the reviewers are difficult. This spoils the transcriptionist’s work plan. Only a good medical transcriptionist can survive the loss of time caused by these reviews.

Now, one needs to be extremely disciplined and patient in order to survive in the industry.

If you want to become a medical transcriptionist, you have to be willing to commit to it. Do I scare you? Well, the medical transcription profession does not ask for any qualifications or experience from you. It just expects you to have the aptitude for the job and the willingness to do it with all sincerity. Here’s what you need to become a medical transcriptionist.

• Command over the English language: A transcription should be able to put sense in its record. If your English grammar is poor, you may end up changing the meaning of some information.
• Proficiency in handling a word processor: You have to be extremely comfortable working with a word processor.
• Above-average typing-speed: This is not critical but important in order to maintain a high level of productivity.
• Ability to work independently: A medical transcriptionist should be able to work on his/her own, without supervision. This requires extreme maturity and discipline.
• Willingness to learn: As a medical transcriptionist, you have to keep updating your medical knowledge almost on a daily basis.
• Willingness to research independently: You have to refer to external materials and research in case of a difficult medical record.
• Analytical skills: In the medical transcription profession, you are required to analyze information logically to render meaning to medical records?

Make sure that you have everything it takes to be a medical transcriptionist. Once you have made sure you are ready, start looking for a good medical transcription course. Don’t rule out joining an online course; you may like it better than the conventional one.