The US Department of Labor predicts that the employment of medical transcriptionists will increase 14 percent from 2006 to 2016. This rate of growth is considered faster than the average of other occupations. What substantiates the projection? Why does the world need medical transcriptionists?

Doctors are too busy.
The need for medical transcription came because of the time constraint faced by doctors. Doctors cannot be expected to make and maintain medical records. Moreover, they are not equipped to handle documentation. Medical transcriptionists help save the doctors’ time by delivering complete medical records from the voice recordings made by doctors.

Growing and aging population requires more tests and treatments.
The increasing population drives the need for more medical records. The aging population requires more medical procedures – tests and treatments. This calls for an increase in health documentation. Medical transcriptionists are required to handle this increased need of medical documents.

Speech recognition software does not deliver accurate results.
The speech recognition has been considered a threat to medical transcription by many. However, the software is not equipped to handle the work that is done by medical transcriptionists. The software requires doctors to spend a lot of time training and using it, thereby eating up their valuable time. Moreover, the results of the speech recognition software are not accurate, requiring human intervention to make edits and analyze the records. The software cannot deliver complete medical records. However, it can be used to aid the work of a medical transcriptionist.

The importance of medical records is not unknown. A medical record not only keeps a track of an individual’s health but also helps claim insurance. As long as the world needs medical records, it will need medical transcriptionists.