What is the single biggest thing that points to how good you are your work? Timing? Well, it is extremely important but it does not necessarily indicate how good or bad your work is. So, what am I referring to? I am talking about the quality of your work. It is your work’s quality that defines whether you are a good medical transcriptionist or not.

So, what is quality in medical transcription? The fewer the errors in the medical record you create, the higher the quality. The medical transcription industry expects a certain quality from you. And that is 98 percent accuracy. That’s a big figure, right? Well, let me surprise you a little more. The profession has zero tolerance with respect to something defined as critical errors.

The reason the quality standard is so high in the profession is because of the criticality of information in the medical records. Let’s look at the types of medical transcription errors as defined by the Association of Healthcare Documentation Integrity (AHDI).

Critical Errors: They are called so because they can impact the safety of a patient. The industry has zero tolerance for these errors. Incorrect patient information, incorrect names and doses of medicines, incorrect values in test results, incorrect test names, and missing a part of the recorded information amount to critical errors.

Major Errors: These errors are the ones that impact the integrity of the medical document. One has to achieve 98 percent accuracy with respect to major errors. Incorrect spelling of English words and medical terms, incorrect inferences owing to incorrect verbiage, failure to comply with protocols and policies, failure to highlight any missing information, and intentional highlighting of information cause major errors.

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

So, do you think you are doing a good job?

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?

The quality goals in medical transcription are difficult. You already know that. And they ought to be difficult. After all, it is medical transcription that creates medical records of patients. A careless mistake can even cause someone his/her life. So, as a medical transcriptionist, you have got to deliver very quality work.

How does the profession quantify this quality? Well, the overall quality goal is at least 98 percent. And when it comes to critical errors, it is 100 percent. Talking of errors, let’s look at the categories of medical transcription errors as defined by the Association of Healthcare Documentation Integrity (AHDI). There are three types of errors: critical errors, major errors, and minor errors.

Critical errors are the ones that can impact the safety of a patient. This is the reason the profession has zero tolerance with respect to these errors. Examples of critical errors include incorrect patient information, incorrect names and doses of medicines, incorrect values in test results, incorrect test names, and missing a part of the recorded information amount to critical errors.

Major errors are the ones that do not impact the safety of the patient but impact the integrity of the medical document. The medical transcriptionist has to ensure 98 percent accuracy with respect to these errors. Examples of major errors include misspelling regular words and medical terms, incorrect inferences owing to incorrect verbiage, failure to comply with protocols and policies, failure to highlight any missing information, and intentional highlighting of information.

Minor errors mark the areas of improvement in the medical document. They are a bit aesthetic in nature. Here again, the medical transcriptionist has to ensure 98 percent accuracy. Examples of minor errors include errors in punctuation and grammar, inconsistency of format, and typing errors not amounting to any change in the meaning of content.

Let me know if you have more questions about these errors.