How you meet deadlines and quality goals in medical transcription defines how you are as a medical transcriptionist. The deadlines in the profession are extremely stringent and what makes them more difficult are the quality standards one is expected to meet. Compromising on either shows a medical transcriptionist in poor light. So, why are the medical transcription quality goals difficult? Because you are in charge of creating and maintaining medical records. These records have the power to affect people’s health. A small error of yours can cost someone his/her life.

The Association of Healthcare Documentation Integrity (AHDI) has categorized medical transcription errors in three types.

Critical Errors are the ones that can impact the safety of a patient. The industry has zero tolerance for these errors. A medical transcriptionist is required to achieve 100 percent accuracy with respect to critical 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 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 are not factual errors. They are 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.