HIPAA Compliance
The requirements of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act apply to all those who deal with protected health information, including those providing medical records transcription. HIPPA exists to protect patients’ sensitive data. It means that those providing medical records transcribing services must have appropriate physical, process and network security measures in place.
HIPAA’s requirements are stringent and in place for very good reasons. I find that those who are keen to undertake medical transcription work usually have a detailed understanding of their moral and ethical obligations when it comes to confidentiality. HIPAA is there to ensure that those obligations are fulfilled.
Extensive Medical Terminology Knowledge
This is an absolute must. Medical record transcription includes the names of diseases, parts of the body, procedures, treatments and much, much more. I mentioned above that it might be possible for a non-medical transcriber to produce a medical transcript but doing so would involve spending so much time looking up medical terminology to check accuracy that it would quickly make the work unworthwhile.
Pros and Cons of Hiring Professionals for Your Medical Transcription Projects
I should point out that you don’t have to hire a transcriber to type up your medical notes. Many doctors prefer to do so themselves. However, if you’re seriously pushed for time then medical transcription services can be a significant help. In light of this, I thought it might be worth exploring the pros and cons of medical transcription in a little more detail.
Pros
The pros of medical transcription include:
- High quality, accurate and well-presented medical notes, regardless of how up to date your own typing and word processing skills may be.
- Guaranteed delivery times, so you know you’ll have the notes you need at the time you need.
- HIPAA compliance, so you can be sure your notes are produced in a way that protects patients’ sensitive data.
- The ability to outsource – you can buy in medical transcription as and when you need it, for example during particularly busy periods, without having to cover the cost of hiring additional staff to undertake the work. This can be a highly cost-effective long-term solution.
- Management workload relief, so that you can focus on tasks other than typing.
Cons
Medical transcription cons include:
- Finding the right transcription company. I appreciate the trust that it takes to hand over sensitive patient information to another company. This means that finding the right company requires a rigorous selection process. You need to analyse their expertise, reputation, security procedures, costs and more. All of which takes time – time that you could be spending focusing on providing healthcare services.
- Security and privacy issues. By sending files outside of your network, whether over the internet or through a smartphone app, you’re introducing an additional element of risk to your patients’ information. Checking your medical transcription company is HIPAA compliant goes some way towards mitigating your risk. However, the fact remains that the more you transmit data, the more places in which you store it and the more people who handle it, the greater the potential for a security breach.
- Cost – using any medical transcription service means incurring a cost that you would otherwise not have to bear.
How to Find the Right Medical Transcription Services
If you’re ready to use a medical records transcription service, it’s essential to put time into finding the right one. I appreciate that doing so will be a distraction from your day-to-day tasks, but it’s a time commitment that can, ultimately, save you a great deal of time further down the line, making it a worthwhile investment of your time upfront.
Finding the right medical transcription services for your needs is key. You need a service that operates smoothly and efficiently. One that you can send your audio files to and know that the medical transcripts will be produced without generating multiple interruptions to your work and without you needing to chase up the transcriptionist repeatedly after yet another deadline has been missed.
If you’ve not used medical transcribing before, I recommend asking around your professional network for recommendations (of course, I also highly recommend using Tomedes’ professional medical transcribers). If you aim to shortlist three or four companies, you’ll be able to grill each of them on their approach to security, timescales, commitment to accuracy, medical experience and so forth, then see how they compare.
You’ll also need to discuss costs. I mentioned the cost above as one of the cons of using medical transcribing. However, if you factor in the cost of your own time, then it becomes much easier to view the transcription cost as being offset against that. Still, that doesn’t mean that you don’t need to get value for money from the transcription service you use, so find out which of the agencies you’re looking at provides the best value (and note that I say ‘best value’ rather than ‘lowest cost’ as there are distinct differences between those two).
One area to focus on particularly is the transcriber’s medical experience. The more closely this relates to your own medical specialism, the better. If you work with a medical transcription agency, rather than an individual transcriber, you will likely have access to a far wider range of specialist experience and expertise.
Medical transcription companies may also have the edge when it comes to HIPAA compliance, as businesses with their own IT teams tend to have more time and energy to devote to electronic and data security matters. I’m generalising, clearly, but it’s a point that needs careful consideration when you choose who to appoint to undertake your medical records transcription work.
Once you have your shortlist, it’s a good idea to ask each of the transcribers to undertake a test transcription. This can help you to assess not just the quality of the resulting medical transcript, but also things such as customer service and adherence to deadlines.
I would caution here that you’re essentially asking for them to work for free, so don’t make the test too long and bear in mind that some transcription companies may be reluctant to provide free tests as it takes their transcriptionists’ time away from paid work. For any test that you do assign (and every recording for that matter), always speak as clearly as possible so that you get the best results.
Phone
+91 949 583 3319
info@transorze.com (MD)
mentor@transorze.com (Director Training)
jyotsna@transorze.com (Regional Head)
Address
Transorze Solutions,
Minus 2, Thejaswini Building,
Technopark, Trivandrum, Kerala.
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