Medical Transcription Outsourcing - Helps in Improvement and Expansion of Services

The healthcare business is a complex process requiring the healthcare facilities to juggle various tasks like providing quality healthcare to patients, managing paperwork and dealing with complex
administrative tasks.

Healthcare facilities not only have to provide quality healthcare to patients but also have to deal with payers and regulatory authorities to be successful and profitable. Considering the complexities of successfully running a healthcare facility, it is important that the healthcare facility focus their time and resources on the core business and outsource the rest.

Outsourcing non-core tasks would help the healthcare facilities improve their services and save on resources. Medical transcription is one such activity that is not part of the core business of healthcare in spite of being an important contributor to the process of providing quality healthcare and quickening the reimbursement process. Outsourcing this process can help healthcare facilities in improvement and expansion of services.

How does outsourcing transcription help in improvement and expansion of services?

Medical transcription is the process of creating patient records by converting the dictation of the patient- healthcare professional encounter into text format. Patient records form the basis of further care decisions, reimbursements and are a component of risk management.

Outsourcing helps in improvement and expansion of services by providing the following:

Simple solution - The solutions provided by transcription vendors are simple in the sense that it simplifies the way the healthcare professionals and support staff work, by letting them gain maximum benefits from the technology used by the service provider, while still remaining easy to use. The doctors/nurses/support staff can continue to use their preferred modes of capturing the details of the patient- healthcare professional encounter. The uploading of audio files and modes of document delivery would be programmed to minimize the efforts of the support staff.

Lowering costs - Availing services from an ethical and professional vendor helps the healthcare facility to save on cost of transcription. Outsourcing brings a direct saving of 40% to 50% on the cost per line of transcription and also results in indirect savings on overheads, infrastructure, cost of supervision and management of transcription in-house, resulting in better utilization of resources.

Maximize resources - By availing services from the third party vendor the space, the equipment, the furniture, the information technology resources used for the process of creating patient medical records can be put to good use for developing the core business of the healthcare facility.

Streamlining the flow of information - It also helps streamline the flow of information by making sure that transcripts are prompt and delivered to the healthcare professionals via the modes specified by them. Options like delivery of transcripts to more than one person, remote faxing/ printing, delivery to specified folders ensures that the flow of information is streamlined.

Accelerating revenue flow - Patient records are the basis on which the coding and billing process takes place, leading to reimbursements. Ensuring that patient records are created on time helps quicken the reimbursement process and accelerates the revenue flow.

Better time management - By outsourcing medical transcription the hospital/ clinic is essentially outsourcing the recruitment of transcriptionists, training, work allocation, monitoring accuracy levels, collection & distribution of transcripts, the information technology requirements, providing for HIPAA/ HITECH compliance during transcription to the service provider. This enables the administrative and management staff of the healthcare facility to manage their time better.

Easy transition to EMR - Outsourcing medical transcription also eases the process of transition to EMR by providing HL7 interface. This has the benefit of adopting EMR without making many changes in the way the healthcare professional captures information of the patient encounter. Dictation has been found to be the preferred choice of capturing information, as it allows the healthcare professional to provide maximum details.

Outsourcing to the right medical transcription service provider can help the healthcare facilities improve and expand on their services.

About the Author
Renee Kelly has written numerous articles on medical transcription services, which has served as an amazing resource for healthcare facilities and healthcare professionals seeking the services of medical transcription companies.
Source: http://goarticles.com/