Medical Transcription

When it comes to choosing the right type of medical transcription services for your medical practice, there are three factors which are extremely important and need to be taken into consideration when seeking these solutions.

These are:

1. Turnaround Time - How long it takes the service to produce the text document once they have received the dictation.

2. Accuracy - How accurate are they in relation to spelling, grammar and production of medical terminology within the document.

3. Security - What kind of security controls and systems do they have in place to ensure that no unauthorized access can be gained to their systems?

Below we will now take a closer look at all these factors, which will help you to make a more informed decision with regard to finding the right transcription service for your medical practice.

Turnaround Time:

Most services will offer their clients a turnaround time of between 24 and 48 hours for all work that they receive. However, there are some services which offer a STAT service and in these cases they will normally be able to turn the work around within 1, 2 or 4 hours of it being received at their location. Of course, you will have to pay more for this particular service.

Accuracy:

Wherever possible, choose those services that only employ certified medical transcriptionists. Not only will they have a complete understanding in relation to all medical terminology, but they will have the experience of producing such documents. Also, enquire of the medical transcription service that you are thinking of using if they have people who will be carrying out quality assurance of all work that is produced. It is their job to read through every document prior to it being released back to the client. It is important that you ask the service just how many of these people they employ and how many will be looking at each of the transcripts prior to them being released.

Unfortunately, medical transcripts which are inaccurate could endanger the well being of a health professional's patients. So ensuring that all the work produced by a med transcription service is accurate is extremely vital.

Security:

All medical transcription services based in the USA are subject to the rules and regulations set out by HIPAA. Certainly for those companies who provide their services to their clients using a web based system, they must have 128 bit SSL security in place. Although the service does not need to know everything about how this system works, they do need to ensure that all the pages on their website which are used to transfer patient data have SSL. This can easily be identified by both the medical transcription service and their clients through the "https" prefix contained within the address bar, as well as by a lock icon to be found in the lower corner of the browser. It is therefore important that all healthcare professionals ask their transcription service provider if they use any other form of communication method for web based work. If they do, then they will need to find out what security measures they have in place to ensure that the site remains secure.

Not only do healthcare professionals need to worry about the security the medical transcription services have in place with regards to the computers and the internet, they also need to enquire what security measures they have in place with regards to the people that they employ. You will need to enquire what security measures they have in place to protect the data that they hold and how they screen potential new employees for their business.

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