Quality healthcare is based on the foundation of the qualification, skills, experience of healthcare professionals, appropriate equipment, the right drugs and information regarding the patient’s health condition. Medical transcription plays an important role in the process of healthcare by creating patient records converting the audio files of the patient-healthcare professional encounter into text format.

Patient records act as reference points in the following areas:

• Providing demographic details of the patient
• Past and present symptoms exhibited by the patient
• Details of past examinations/tests/ procedures
• Past diagnosis/ treatments
• Drugs prescribed
• Allergy information
• Preexisting conditions

It is vital that patient records be created on a timely basis, capturing maximum information accurately. Medical transcription is the process of patient record creation. Though playing such a vital role in the healthcare process, this process adds to the costs. Considering this, Imedical Healthcare Solutions it is important for healthcare facilities to contain the costs of creating patient medical record to the maximum extent possible without compromising quality, security or turnaround time.

How can this process be made economical?

Outsourcing the entire process of creating patient medical records to a professional service provider can not only help the healthcare facility reduce cost per line of transcription, but also reduce overheads that would be incurred by having this process in-house.

How is outsourcing medical transcription economical?

To find out whether outsourcing is really economical it is important to understand the meaning of the word economical. The word economical has been defined as using the minimum of time or resources necessary for effectiveness.

Outsourcing is an economical solution for the documentation needs of a healthcare facility as it helps the healthcare facility economize in the following areas:

• Helps reduce cost per line of transcription: Helps reduce the cost per line of transcription by as much as 40%-60%. Apart from that this also helps the healthcare facility contain costs to the extent the service is used. Extra expenses like overtime payment for high volumes or wastage due to idle capacity are avoided.
• Helps reduce indirect cost of an in-house department: This process requires deployment of resources like recruitment & training expenses, real estate costs, cost of transcription equipment, cost of utilities, cost of working capital, cost of IT and management resources etc. All these expenses can be avoided by availing the services of specialist transcription vendor
• Saves the time of healthcare professionals: Doing this helps save time of healthcare professionals in the following ways:

1. Allowing them to use flexible modes of dictation
2. Reducing time spent editing and correcting records by maintaining accuracy
3. Improving efficiency by having features like remote printing and faxing

• Saves the time of other support staff: Doing this helps save the time of support staff by providing the following benefits:

1. Powerful archiving facilities
2. Having HIPAA/HITECH compliant measures in place to ensure security of data
3. By allowing automatic uploads of dictation and automatic downloads of transcripts by using efficient technology
4. Having options for integration with EMR/EHR
5. Having a transparent and well defined billing methodology, making it easier to reconcile accounts