What is the most obvious reason for choosing home-based medical transcription? The flexibility it promises to offer. But this flexibility has the potential to make us procrastinate and lose track of our careers. Yes, you can spoil your career if you do not handle the flexibility of working from home responsibly. Here’s a list of things you should do and not do if you want to earn credibility as a home-based medical transcriptionist.

• Make a work routine and stick to it. Inform everyone at home about your working hours and ask them not to disturb you.
• Try not to attend to domestic chores when you are working. Let the kitchen sink sulk with a heap of utensils in it. Don’t prioritize anything else over your work.
• Don’t prolong your breaks for a sneak peak into the latest issue of your favorite magazine. Prolonging breaks can disturb the flow of work.
• Put your phone on answering mode. You can check your messages when you take a logical break. Make sure your business phone is active though.
• Don’t turn on the television during your working hours. If you have your favorite show coming during your working hours, either record it to watch later or adjust your work hours so that you are done with your work when your show starts.
• Inform your family, friends, and neighbors about your work timings and tell them that you will be unavailable during that time.
• Don’t get online unless your work demands. When you are online, stay away from networking sites.

Get the idea? All the best for your home-based medical transcription career!

There are quite a number of medical transcription aspirants who look forward to joining the profession solely to be able to work from home. And then there are those who do not want to take work to home. Home-based medical transcription has its pros and cons. And it is recommended you analyze both the sides before making a decision about home-based medical transcription.

Home-based medical transcription is good because of the comfort and flexibility it offers. You get to choose your own work timings with home-based transcription. So, if you are most productive in the wee hours of the morning or in the mid-afternoon when nobody is at home, you can choose to fix that time as your working time. Home-based work also helps you save costs. You can save commuting costs as well as the money you would have spent in buying office wear.

Working as a freelancing medical transcriptionist, you have the liberty to accept and reject work. You do not need to work on every task that comes your way. You can choose the ones that you are most comfortable with.

The reason home-based medical transcription doesn’t offer you a smooth ride always is the isolation and the absence of guidance. The home-based medical transcription job expects you to work completely on your own. The profession requires you to keep learning. Now, learning in isolation can be quite a challenge. Add to that the responsibility of conforming to the Health Insurance Profitability and Accountability Act (HIPAA).

Home brings along with it household responsibilities and several distractions. Keeping a balance between your professional and personal life while being at one place can be quite challenging.

I would advise you to work as a regular medical transcriptionist for some time, understand the challenges of the job and study the challenges in the home-based work, and then decide whether you want to be a home-based medical transcriptionist or not.

Everybody, well almost, wants to be able to work from home. Add ‘home’ to any job and it will become lucrative enough. Being able to make a living while being at home promises to be such a pleasant opportunity. But all that glitters is not gold.

Home-based medical transcription adds more challenges to the already challenging medical transcription profession. It is not for the faint-willed. Only the most dedicated and disciplined can work as a home-based medical transcriptionist. Why, you ask. Well, let me take you through the difficulties in medical transcription from home.

You are responsible for your office

Your work at home begins with setting up your home office. It is from this office that you will be starting out a new career. Therefore, don’t convert just any corner of your house into your office. Your office has to be spacious, comfortable and peaceful. Setting up the office also means getting all the equipment and furniture in place. You need to get a comfortable working chair for yourself or you’ll end up damaging your neck and back. And you will need a phone dedicated completely to your work. In the conventional office, your employer takes care of these things; at home, you are your boss!

You are responsible for the security and confidentiality of medical information

One of the biggest responsibilities you have as a medical transcriptionist is the security and confidentiality of medical information that passes through your hands. You have to comply with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) for data security. Now, this is not an easy task in any way.

You are responsible to keep yourself focused and motivated

Distractions are aplenty when you work from home. You have to keep distractions away and remain focused over long periods of time. Moreover, the medical transcription work may tend to become monotonous in the long run; it is up to you to keep your interest intact in the work. Yes, you have got to keep yourself motivated.

When working from home you are responsible for just every aspect of work. Now, doing everything right to earn goodwill is not easy. This is why it is important you figure out whether home-based medical transcription is for you or not.

Many medical transcriptionists who work in a medical transcription company envy those transcriptionists who get to work from home. If you are interested in switching to home-based medical transcription, you must understand the challenges and responsibilities that await you at home. Let’s look at what all you need to start working from home.

You have to start with finding office space at home. Any corner of your house cannot become your office. Your office has got to be spacious, comfortable, and peaceful.

You will need a computer and furniture for your office. You will need everything that makes you comfortable while you work. Get a comfortable seat and ergonomical keyboard and mouse.

You have to arrange for a separate phone for your work. Yes, you need a business phone when you work from home. You cannot afford to use your personal or home phone for business purposes.

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) requires every medical transcriptionist to keep medical information secure and confidential. Now, it’s easier in an office when you are just required to follow your employer’s instructions. However, at home, you are responsible for taking measures to conform to HIPAA guidelines.

Let your family and friends know about your decision to work from home, and also inform them of your work hours. Your family has to become aware of your decision, but they also need to adjust to your work timings. Also, your friends should know when not to disturb you.

If you have young children at home, you need to make sure that they are attended to and taken care of well while you are dealing with your deadlines.

So, you understand, you need to take care of a lot of things when you work from home. Also, the comforts at home can distract you and may make you complacent. Make sure you are really disciplined enough to handle work from home.

A medical transcriptionist is required to be extremely disciplined and focused. However, when the transcriptionist decides to work from home things can go out of hand.

Home brings along numerous distractions. It is imperative that you keep distractions at bay or your home-based career is doomed. Here are a few guidelines to help you focus on your work.

• Make a work routine and stick to it. Inform everyone at home about your working hours and ask them not to disturb you.

• Put your phone on answering mode. You can check your messages when you take a logical break. Make sure your business phone is active though.
• Don’t get online unless your work demands. When you are online, stay away from networking sites.
• Don’t attend to domestic chores when you are working. Don’t prioritize anything else over your work.
• Don’t keep the television on during your working hours. If you have your favorite show coming on during your working hours, either record it to watch later, or adjust your work hours so that you are done with your work when your show starts. Or, just change your taste!
• Inform your family, friends and neighbors about your work timings and tell them that you will be unavailable during those times.
• Don’t prolong your breaks for a sneak peak into the latest issue of your favorite magazine. Prolonging breaks can disturb the flow of work.
• Don’t make personal calls during your work hours. You may be tempted to call family and friends, but your calls may get extended for a long time, disrupting your routine. If talking to loved ones keeps you motivated, call them but limit your calls to a few minutes.

Home-based medical transcription works for many people and yet doesn’t suit a lot of people. It has its fair share of pros and cons. Let’s first look at what makes it lucrative.

It gives you the comfort and flexibility that no other job offers. You get to choose your own work timings in home-based transcription. So, if you are most productive in the wee hours of the morning, you can choose to fix that time as your working time.

Home-based medical transcription allows you to choose your work. You have the liberty to accept and reject work. You do not need to work on every task that comes your way. You can choose the ones that you are most comfortable with.

The home-based medical transcription job helps you save money. First, you save commuting and then you get to save the money you would have spent in buying office-wear.

So far, everything looks OK with this career decision. So, what is it that deters people from committing to it? Let’s look at the challenges of home-based medical transcription.

You don’t have a boss when you are working from home. However, you may feel the need for guidance from time to time. The home-based medical transcription job expects you to work completely on your own.

You are required to keep updating your knowledge. Learning on your own regularly needs you to be tremendously disciplined.

Working from home requires you to keep distractions at bay, balance work and life consistently and be committed to your work in spite of the domestic, familial and social responsibilities that call on you. Handling an office from home is far from easy.

It’s easy to say. “I want to work from home as a medical transcriptionist.” There, done. Now, where’s the work? I mean, the job is well paid, the hours great and I can work whenever I feel like it, can’t I? Sorry to burst your bubble.

The pay, starting out, is good but not great and you have strict deadlines so you can’t really work when you want and take frequent vacations. Take a couple of days off and someone else will step in and do the work. Then you can take all the time off you want – and don’t want, since you will no longer have a job.

Even though you work from home, a career as a medical transcriptionist is just that – a career. As with any career, it has to be nurtured and developed at a steady pace. Initially, your income will be quite low, it is only the most experienced transcriptionists that can command top dollar. If you ever get to that level then, yes, you too can command top dollar.

Your career starts with comprehensive training, in fact, Your career will be dogged by continued training as you learn new diseases and medical terms.  Once you have completed that training you will need to advertise yourself to the medical world at large.

You will sit waiting, watching your inbox, praying for work – and it will be slow in arriving. Over time, as you build a reputation as a top class medical transcriptionist, that work will start to flow faster.  So, while the theory of working from home is that you can work when you want, in reality, you cannot – once a job arrives in your inbox you will have a set time limit to complete the task. There is an upside, of course. Like all careers, put the time and effort into it early and you will find that as time goes by you can: earn good money, work the hours you want and even take the days off you want – you just have to earn that right first.

There are medical transcriptionists who have turned their career into very successful businesses. Because they are highly proficient at the work they do, they are able to recruit less experienced transcriptionists to their business. The business person then accepts work, which is farmed out to those less experienced personnel. Does it work? It can and in many cases does.

Because of the transcriptionists reputation, they find they are receiving more work than they can handle. One solution is to take on someone new to the profession and let them gain experience.  They are not paid the full rate since they are still learning the ropes. The experienced medical transcriptionist reviews the transcription before it is sent on.

Over time, if taking on one employee works, the transcriptionist then takes on a second and third and so on. Before you know it, the experienced medical transcriptionist is no longer doing any transcribing themselves; they are spending their time reviewing work done and negotiating more work. As a business owner, they are paid the difference between what is paid to them and what is paid to their employee.

What many people don’t realize is that this is how a good many businesses start, including those outside the transcription niche. Can you do it? Are you a highly experienced medical transcriptionist that can turn work around on time every time with 100% accuracy? No – well keep working at it. When you find you are getting too much work at good rates then you can consider it. If you do meet those attributes, what are you doing here? Of course, if you’re looking to recruit, that’s a different matter. Just let us know your requirements.

When you choose home-based medical transcription, you are thinking about the many benefits you will reap as a result of your decision. However, home-based work is not all about benefits; it has its share of challenges. One of the biggest challenges is handling distractions. Everything at home has the power to take your mind off work. How do you keep distractions at bay? Here are some guidelines I have come up with.

• Don’t attend to domestic chores when you are working. Let the kitchen sink sulk with a heap of utensils in it. Don’t prioritize anything else over your work.
• Make a work routine and stick to it. Inform everyone at home about your working hours and ask them not to disturb you.
• Put your phone on answering mode. You can check your messages when you take a logical break. Make sure your business phone is active though.
• Don’t make personal calls during your work hours. You may be tempted to call family and friends, but your calls may get extended for a long time, disrupting your routine.
• Don’t prolong your breaks for a sneak peak into the latest issue of your favorite magazine. Prolonging breaks can disturb the flow of work.
• Don’t switch on the television during your working hours. If you have your favorite show coming on during your working hours, either record it to watch later or adjust your work hours so that you are done with your work when your show starts.
• Inform your family, friends, and neighbors about your work timings and tell them that you will be unavailable during that time.
• Don’t get online unless your work demands. When you are online, stay away from networking sites.

Please share your ways of keeping distractions at bay.

Working from home is so great, isn’t it? Yes, it is. And we are talking about medical transcription in particular. Home-based medical transcription suits us for many reasons.

First, you get to be at home. Imagine the level of comfort you feel when you are home. Working from home is convenient and you get to make yur office space the way you like. However, remember, that home-based work does not imply casual work.

Second, you get to save money. You no longer need to commute to work. Also, you don’t need to invest in office wear.

Third, you get to save a lot of time. You no longer need to spend hours commuting to your workplace. This helps you get time for other important things in your life like your family and friends.

Fourth, you save yourself from the harassment of driving through traffic or waiting for public transport. You save yourself from getting exhausted.

If these reasons were not enough for you to opt for home-based work, let’s talk about a flexibility that only medical transcription can offer. You get to choose your work timings. Not only that. You get to choose the number of hours you want to work. And, yeah, you get to say ‘no’. You can refuse work that does not interest you or when you have your hands full. Need I say more?

Home-based medical transcription is definitely lucrative. But, yes, it has its share of challenges. It is important that you find out if you can handle its challenges before you commit to it.