Medical transcription outsourcing: Reduce cost of medical transcription by 40%!

Documenting the care process has always been vital for healthcare services both in terms of the actual care process and for other purposes like administrative, receivables management and risk management. However medical transcription is one of the methods of documenting the care process that is convenient, accurate and provides services with integrity. As in-house medical transcription can prove to be a time consuming and expensive service it is important to look for options that help reduce cost of transcription while meeting all the quality criteria for healthcare documentation. Outsourcing transcription to a professional medical transcription company has proven to be a prudent option to meet all these criteria.

Outsourcing medical transcription has many benefits the most obvious being that of saving on transcription costs.  While analyzing transcription costs healthcare facilities tend to overlook many important cost heads hence the comparison between the price per line given by the outsourcing company and the current cost per line is not accurate.

What should be included while calculating cost on medical transcription in-house?

Direct costs

·       Direct transcriptionist staff salaries: This comprises the salary paid to in-house transcriptionists.

·       Cost of training: The cost of training new transcriptionists to enable them to execute work as per the healthcare facility’s requirements.

·       Supplies used for transcription: The stationery cost and the cost of other supplies used for transcription would have an impact on the cost per line.

·       Cost of overflow work that is outsourced: Sometimes when the in-house transcriptionists are not able to keep up with excess workflow the work needs to be outsourced and this adds to the cost.

Indirect costs

• Depreciation of transcription equipment: Over time the transcription equipment would have some wear and tear, this depreciation cost will have to be added to the cost of transcription.

• Apportioning salaries of management and administrative staff: The salaries of managerial and administrative staff contributing to the transcription process will have to be apportioned and added accordingly.

• Benefits given to employees other than the salary: Benefits given to transcription staff like health insurance, dental care etc will have to be added in the category of indirect costs.

• Taxes: Having transcription staff on rolls would mean taxes would have to be paid.

• Cost of space used for in-house transcription: Apportionment of cost of real estate cost would have to be made according to the space utilization.

• Cost of employee turnover: This would include fees paid to consultants, signing bonuses, cost of training new employees and the cost of advertising for new employees.

• Cost of technology: The cost of technology used for medical transcription and the cost of integrating this with the hospital’s system needs to be added.

Apart from the direct and indirect costs of medical transcription in-house the other factors that need to considered are:

• No of days taken for transcription
• Quality of reports
• Physician satisfaction
• HIPAA compliance
• Report generation and distribution
• Easy availability of qualified staff for transcription.

Given below is a table of typical expenses of transcription in-house:

Item	Cost in US $ per annum
Salary	30000
Benefits	8000
Real estate	2000
Furniture	1000
Computer	2000
Management	5000
Consumables	1000
Utilities	500
Miscellaneous	500
Total cost	50000

Given below is the productivity of a medical transcriptionist

Production
Number of lines per 8 hour day	1250
Work hours per year	1920
Lines per year	300000
Downtime in %	10
Actual lines produced in a year	270000
Cost per line	18.5

After calculating the costs of all these factors one can arrive at the cost per line of transcription.

Outsourcing medical transcription to a professional medical transcription company can help reduce transcription costs dramatically.

TransDyne, a leader in the outsourced medical transcription industry has used their extensive background in information technology and their experience in serving the needs of the healthcare sector to provide affordable and integrated medical transcription solutions. TransDyne offers competitive prices as low as 10 cents per 65-character line resulting in savings ranging from 20% to 50%.

Among the software and tools offered by TransDyne for transcription, the smart delivery system has a large role to play in easing the path to EMR/EHR adoption The Smart Delivery system, which has features like User defined folder paths to enable easy imports to EMR systems is the suggested mode of document delivery where pre-defined file saving would help import documents to EMR systems.  Apart from this TransDyne also offers discounted rates for those healthcare facilities that provide demographic data entered in the EMR rather than through other modes.

Along with medical transcription services involving multiple level quality checks to ensure accuracy, the use of the right technology for ease of use, turnaround time and security, at reasonable rates, TransDyne also provides discrete reportable transcription for adoption of EMR/ EHR.

To avail complete medical transcription services from TransDyne, click here.