Healthcare is an ever-changing dynamic sector. As healthcare is a vital service aiding in saving lives or providing services that improve quality of life, change is an inevitable part of healthcare services. It is therefore important for healthcare services as well all services allied with healthcare to be creative in finding solutions as the situation demands. Healthcare being a complex process draws inputs from various associated sectors like pharmaceuticals, healthcare equipment manufacturers, biotechnology etc. One important source that helps the smooth the process of healthcare is information regarding the medical history of patients from their medical records. Medical transcription is the process of creating patient medical records into easily accessible format by converting the audio files of the healthcare professional- patient encounter into text format. This makes it easy for healthcare professionals and support staff to access this information easily to aid them in every stage of the treatment process. Patient medical records are a valuable source containing details of the patients regarding demographics, lifestyle, drug interaction & allergies, past diagnoses, treatments, test results, progress notes etc allowing the healthcare professionals to make informed decisions regarding the diagnosis and treatment of patients. As this is a complex process requiring the right mix of people, processes, technology and infrastructure to produce records that are accurate and timely. As creating medical records in-house would dilute the focus of healthcare facilities from their core business, one easy fix to ensure that the output is accurate, timely, secure and cost effective is to outsource the documentation requirements to a professional service provider. Outsourcing also has the added advantage of providing creative solutions to transcription needs of healthcare professionals / healthcare facilities. How does outsourcing medical transcription provide creative solutions? Outsourcing itself is a creative solution for the needs of healthcare facilities and healthcare professionals. Outsourcing ensures not only saving on costs, but also ensures that healthcare professionals and healthcare facilities have the benefits of professional services without having to deploy valuable resources like human resource management staff, real estate, management personnel, information technology personnel, working capital, transcription equipment, utilities etc. which would have been deployed for in-house work. Some of the other creative solutions due to outsourcing are: Ensuring accuracy and turnaround time from the very start: The requirement of healthcare professionals to have accurate and timely transcripts from the very beginning of services has been solved by training medical transcriptionists in one or two specialties making them domain experts. This ensures that there is no learning curve when transcriptionists start transcribing any specialty; they are already familiar with the language of the specialty! Remote services: Having a scribe following the healthcare professional taking notes or recording conversations would be inconvenient, inhibiting, unhygienic (in situations requiring sterile conditions like operations etc) not to mention in violation of the sanctity of the doctor- patient relationship. By having the medical transcription service in a remote location all these issues are resolved and the healthcare facility can save on overhead costs. Turnaround time: Healthcare professionals need information that is not only accurate, but timely too. The problem of meeting tight turnaround time has been creatively solved using the right combination of people and technology. Transcriptionists ensure that patient records are created with accuracy and technology enables automatic upload of dictation and download of transcripts ensuring turnaround times are minimized. Solving the time constraint problems of healthcare professionals: Time is a precious commodity for healthcare professionals, taking this into consideration transcription vendors have provided them with flexible modes of dictation allowing them to make optimum use of their limited time. Multiple modes of delivering transcripts: Healthcare professionals may require transcripts to be delivered by various modes and in certain circumstances to more than one person/system. Outsourced medical transcription services have creatively used technology to enable document delivery to specified folders, through fax, through Email and directly to EMR systems, all the while ensuring that transcripts are transmitted through secure channels ensuring HIPAA/ HITECH compliance by using appropriate security measures.
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