Contracting out medical transcription has many advantages the most apparent being that of saving on expenditure. While investigating costs healthcare providers tend to overlook several major expenses heads hence the comparison between the price per line given by the outsourcing vendor and the current expenses per line is not correct.
What should be included while calculating expenditure on captive transcription?
Direct expenses
* Direct transcriptionist staff wages: This consists of the salary paid to captive transcriptionists.
* Costs of preparation: The expenses of teaching the new team to enable them to execute jobs as per the healthcare practice’s requirements.
* Supplies: The stationery expenses and the expenditure of other supplies used for transcription would have an impact on the costs per line.
* Expenditure of overflow jobs that is contracted out: Sometimes when the captive team is not able to keep up with excess workflow the tasks needs to be outsourced and this adds to the costs.
Indirect expenses
* Depreciation of machinery: Over time the equipment used would have some wear and tear, this depreciation expenditure will have to be added to the expenditure
* Apportioning salaries of management and administrative staff: The wages of managerial and administrative staff contributing to the medical record creation method will have to be apportioned and added accordingly.
* Benefits given to employees other than the wages: plus points given to staff like health insurance, dental care etc will have to be added in the category of indirect costs.
* Taxes: Having staff on rolls would mean taxes would have to be paid.
* Costs of space used: allocation of expenditure of real estate costs would have to be made according to the space usage.
* Costs of employee turnover: This would include fees paid to consultants, signing bonuses, expenses of teaching new employees and the expenditure of advertising for new employees.
* Costs of technology: The costs of software and tools used for healthcare transcription and the expenses of integrating this with the hospital’s system needs to be added.
Apart from the direct and indirect expenses of transcription in-house the other factors that need to considered are:
* No of days taken for delivery of records
* Correctness of reports
* Physician satisfaction
* Data security
* Reports generation and distribution
* Easy availability of qualified staff
Given below is a table of typical expenses of healthcare transcription captive:
Item costs in US $ per annum
Salary 30000
Other benefits 8000
Real estate 2000
Furniture 1000
Computers 2000
Management 5000
Consumables 1000
Utilities 500
Miscellaneous 500
Total costs 50000
Given below is the productivity of a medical transcriptionist
Number of line per 8 hour day 1250
Work hours per year 1920
Lines per year 300000
Downtime in % 10%
Actual lines produced in a year 270000
Expenditure per line 18.5
After calculating the expenditure of all these factors one can arrive at the costs per line.
The rate offered by a typical transcription vendor is 10 cents per 65-character line. This shows a clear conservation in the expenditure per line. The 65-character line is calculated according to the billing method principles as per the MTIA guidelines. The costing method used is supportable, definable, measurable, reliable and equitable & open. .
Not only that contracting out the transcription needs of a healthcare practice to a professional transcription vendor has advantages like:
* Quality of above 99%
* 24 hours turnaround time, with a choice of 4-12 hours turnaround time for STAT records.
* IT that enables smart upload by allowing flexible modes of dictation and facilities like smart delivery and web delivery for ease of use.
* Makes sure data security and HITECH compliance by using the correct technology and having safety procedures in place for security of people and infrastructure.
Author:Renee
Source:http://www.myarticle.com/
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