Medical Transcription services are essential to the healthcare industry and cater to many subfields and specialties of the medical profession.

Offering technical and organizational expertise, medical transcriptionists transcribe audio recordings and doctors’ dictation. This isn’t limited to any speciality—transcription is important everywhere, from dermatology and orthopedics to cardiology and gynecology.

The Importance Of Medical Transcription

Patient records and information are often useful in more than one way. For example, they’re commonly used as evidence or reference in various legal cases, including cases of medical practice lawsuits and disputes involving health insurance claims. This means that the services rendered by medical transcriptionists are all the more indispensable in today’s healthcare industry.

Accuracy and data security have moved beyond simply being ‘important’; they can often be a matter of life and death. It’s essential, then, to hire reliable medical transcription service providers.

The service is often referred to as audio transcription since the dictation is sent in as a recording. This is then transcribed into a digital document that can be repurposed any way the healthcare professional sees fit.

Most medical transcription service providers employ transcriptionists who specialize in transcribing medical dictation from an audio clip. Our services include:

• Emergency room (ER) summaries—The emergency room is one of the busiest rooms in a hospital. Most cases brought in to this high-pressure environment need urgent treatment, and doctors, nurses, and other medical staff tend to communicate quickly and, sometimes, over each other. A trained audio transcriptionist can ensure accuracy in an ER summary report.
• Consultation and clinical report—These are often used for future reference and diagnosis.
• Physical reports and patient history—Detailed patient information and history, along with family medical history, is essential to proper diagnosis and assessment. Physical reports are proof of the current condition of the patient and his/her symptoms.
• Discharge summaries—This is crucial to efficient home care according to the doctor’s instructions. These documents also mention any special restriction or care that the patient needs to undertake for a speedy recovery. They are also used for future references in the event of a relapse.
• Therapy reports—This includes a summary of what the patient has done and said, and also the therapist’s note on the patient’s condition. The report also details what exercises were prescribed to the patient, and how much of these were actually accomplished; many of these reports also include plans and progress notes for future sessions.

Apart from these, medical transcriptionists can transcribe death summaries, surgery reports, and summaries, and patient progress notes.

Dictation can be sent in various formats—such as through digital recordings or using certain applications. The latter transfer dictation to the service provider’s servers directly, once the physician has dictated details into their phone. Telephonic dictation is also possible; this can be availed from anywhere—at a hospital, a patient’s home, or using the cell phone.

Medical audio transcription is not a small industry by any stretch; here are some of the frequently asked questions about medical audio transcription services.

READ MORE: SPEECH RECOGNITION TRANSFORMED THE PROCESS OF MEDICAL DICTATION AND TRANSCRIPTION?

FAQs

What influences the turnaround?

The turnaround depends on a number of factors; the most important one is audio quality. Audio with an unclear accent, background noise, or highly technical content is hard to transcribe, as compared to a clear and crisp audio clip.

Length is also crucial; the time taken to transcribe long files is, of course, more than short files.

In what formats are the transcribed files delivered?

Medical dictations are transcribed into text or MS Word formats. These files are then encrypted and sent by secure FTP, email, or pasted to our client’s EMR systems.

How does billing take place?

Pricing varies from firm to firm. A few charges on a per-minute basis, while others charge per line. It’s best to go for the second option, as you surely wouldn’t want to pay for all the silent periods in your audio.

What is verbatim transcription?

Verbatim transcriptions are the one that retains every single utterance—including false words like ‘ah’, ‘uh’, and wrong words like ‘gonna’, ‘coz’, and the like. You can request transcribers to follow a certain level of verbatim in the transcribed file.

Audio transcriptionists are indispensable to the healthcare industry, especially in the quest for effective patient care.