Friday, June 15, 2012

Medical transcription outsourcing: Essential for change management

In a constantly changing business environment, the approach to healthcare and healthcare documentation is also changing. The proposed move towards a nationwide electronic healthcare exchange has had healthcare facilities and healthcare professionals strategizing their processes and operations towards effective change management.

Healthcare, per say cannot function in isolation as this sector provides a wide array of services to diverse customers and draws support from various sources to ensure safe, quick, effective and efficient delivery of healthcare services.  Healthcare is dependent not only on the education, experience and skills of healthcare professionals but also various sectors like pharmaceuticals, medical equipment manufacturers, information technology and other related services. For effective change management it is important for all these sectors to move in tandem with the changing needs of the healthcare sectors to ensure good results.

Medical transcription – the process of creating patient medical records from the dictation of healthcare professionals is one such service that can help in effective change management.  This is not only due to the vast experience and immense expertise of medical transcription companies, but also due to the fact that these services have constantly evolved to meet the changing needs of the healthcare sector.

Over time medical transcription services have evolved from being simple typing services to services that have adapted their processes and technology to meet the constantly changing needs of the healthcare sector. In the current transition to adoption of EMR/ EHR, medical transcription services have a vital role to play in terms of managing the change while ensuring optimum operations and minimal disruption to workflow.

Medical transcription outsourcing for effective change management:

Structured dictation: Structured dictation is a unique form of dictation where the healthcare professional is taken through a pattern of dictating using an interactive voice menu, which prompts healthcare professionals to dictate in a particular manner. This ensures that the report is transcribed in the manner required ensuring capture of information that is complete, precise, standard, accurate and easy to share. This ensures that the data can be parsed into the EMR/ EHR.

Structured transcription: Structured transcription ensures that the process of transcription follows a standardized pattern so that the discrete data elements from the patient medical record can easily be parsed onto the right fields in the EMR/ EHR. The use of HL7 interface for adopting EMR/ EHR has ensured that transcription can be retained for accuracy without hindering the interaction of healthcare professionals with patients.

Discrete reportable transcription: Discrete reportable transcription can be defined as a unique approach to adoption of EMR/ EHR, which continues to use the traditional method of transcription to create transcripts while instantly populating the EMR/ EHR with discrete data elements. Under this method once the healthcare professional has finished dictating his/her notes, transcripts are created through the usual transcription process using expert medical transcriptionists who ensure accuracy and speed.  After transcription, the transcription software automatically tags the discrete data within the document, such as lab values and medications into the appropriate fields in the EMR/ EHR, using XML coding.

Editing for speech recognition software: The use of backend speech recognition software for adopting EMR/ EHR has the advantage of quality editing and proofreading by medical transcriptionists to ensure accuracy. Medical transcription companies provide this service to ensure that qualified medical transcriptionists validate the draft produced by the software from the dictation of healthcare professionals in terms of accuracy and quality of information.

It can be concluded that outsourcing medical transcription to a professional medical transcription company can act as a catalyst for change management. Outsourcing medical transcription not only ensures that the transition to EMR/ EHR is seamless but also ensures that patient medical records are created along with the narrative portion of the record, which is vital for all aspects like communication, continued care, risk management and receivables management.

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.

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

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