It is a known fact that the healthcare documentation process is guided not only by the needs of healthcare professionals and insurance providers, but also influenced by statutory norms. In the face of the changing requirements for healthcare documentation, healthcare professionals and healthcare facilities are faced with the challenge to meet the new statutory requirements without making significant changes in the way they work, as well as controlling costs.
Medical transcription is the process of creating patient medical records converting the audio records of the patient- healthcare professional encounter into text format. These services aid the healthcare process by ensuring accurate and prompt creation of medical records. However the main challenges faced by healthcare facilities as regards to the process of creating patient medical records are: Imedical Healthcare Solutions
- Limited transcription resources
- Controlling cost
- Dilution of focus on the core business
Taking these challenges and the face of the changing healthcare documentation scenario, outsourcing has been found to be the best solution for healthcare facilities and healthcare professionals to face these challenges
How does outsourcing help healthcare facilities face the challenges of the changing documentation scenario? Simply put outsourcing provides doctors/support staff/clinics/hospitals access to unlimited resources in the form of –
Trained transcriptionists – Access to a sizable pool of skilled and trained personnel helps healthcare facilities face the challenges of the changing documentation scenario by enabling the following:
– Allowing the healthcare professionals to retain their preferred method of creating patient transcripts; dictation to transcription. This enables them to retain the narrative, ensure maximum accuracy while still enabling EMR adoption using HL7 interface
– Transcriptionists trained to be experts in different specialties of medicine can also act as editors and proofreaders for back end speech recognition software based transcripts
– Having detailed records of the patient encounter is an essential element of risk management
Software and tools – The process of medical transcription is made secure and speedy using the right technology. Technology provides healthcare professionals and healthcare facilities with several benefits like:
- Providing a secure and efficient system for transcription
- Allowing healthcare professionals to retain familiar modes of dictation
- HL7 interface
- Archives
- Flexible modes of document delivery
The experience and expertise of the transcription vendor – As the healthcare documentation scenario keeps evolving the experience and expertise of the medical transcription service provider in providing flexible and feasible solutions can provide much needed assistance to healthcare facilities meet documentation requirements.
