What is medical transcription?
As the name suggests, the term “Medical Transcription” (MT) refers to the process of manually converting audio recordings of reports that were dictated by doctors and other medical professionals into written form.
Medical transcription, therefore, is an extremely sensitive process that requires maximum accuracy. Any mistakes or misinterpretations may result in medical errors that could severely affect a patient’s well-being.
Some of the documents involved in medical transcription include:
• Letters to patients
• Letters between medical professionals (e.g., record requests, referrals)
• Patient visits summaries
• Consultations
• Discharge instructions
• Medical histories and reports
• Surgical reports
• Radiology reports
• Lab reports
• Pathology reports
What skillsets are necessary for providing medical transcription services?
When it comes to medical transcription services, there are 3 major skills to consider:
Meticulous attention to detail
The transcription process, in general, is extremely sensitive and requires maximum accuracy. When talking about medical transcription, this fact gets to a new level of seriousness. Given the high sensitivity of the medical field, any mistake or misinterpretation when transcribing medical audio materials can often have catastrophic, even life-threatening consequences.
Sufficient medical knowledge
The medical field is dense with sophisticated terminology and subject matter. As a result, a medical transcriptionist should have a rudimentary understanding of medical nomenclature. The more terminology they are familiar with, the simpler it will be to comprehend the voice recordings and generate an accurate, error-free transcription.
Timely delivery
It goes without saying that punctuality is sacred in every facet of business. When it comes to medical transcription, this cannot be emphasized enough. As doctors tend to produce massive amounts of medical information about their patients, they expect this information to be fully organized as soon as possible because their patients’ well-being depends on that.
How does medical transcription work?
Practically, the medical transcription service takes place in 5 main steps:
1. Professional Medical Dictation
The first step in medical transcription is for a medical practitioner to capture patient information using a digital recording device, such as a phone or a hand-held digital recorder. The medical practitioner must utilize high-tech recording equipment to ensure the integrity of the recording and the precision of the final transcript.
2. Audio files transmission
Once the audio files are ready, they may be sent to a private server where medical transcriptionists can access them and begin transcribing the recordings.
3. Transcribing audio into text
Medical transcribers will listen to the voice files and play them again with the use of foot pedals. A medical transcriptionist’s job is to transcribe what they hear word for word, without altering. In the case of a voice recording that is either unclear or incomplete, the healthcare provider who recorded it will be called for clarification.
4. Editing text files
In this step, the QA team will review all the files through and through making sure to dot the i’s and cross the t’s. All mistakes and discrepancies are detected and amended to make sure the final product is completely flawless before sending it back to the client.
5. Sending the edited files
The last phase of medical transcription is to provide the finalized text files to the healthcare institution, usually by email.
Challenges of medical transcription
A medical transcriptionist’s job is extremely sensitive and demanding as it involves several skills at the same time. For one thing, a skilled medical transcriptionist must be well-versed with the different pieces of transcription equipment. One important piece of equipment is the foot pedals, headsets, and a computer. To be a successful transcriptionist, you must be able to listen and type at the same time, as well as edit and proofread. Moreover, people who work in medical transcription must have a thorough awareness of medical terminology.
Consider too that medical transcriptionists have a reputation for spotting mistakes made by physicians. Healthcare workers, such as doctors and nurses, are always on the go and often exhausted. It is human to make mistakes while communicating, but it is essential to fix any hiccups as soon as possible.
Last by not least, a seasoned medical transcriptionist must be familiar with the laws and regulations involved in handling medical and patient information such as HIPAA and the GDPR.
For that reason, your best choice is to hire a fully-fledged medical transcription service agency.
Why choose our medical transcription services?
Medical Transcription Experts
Our medical transcription team are seasoned perfectionist experts with 10+ years of experience in the field. They have demonstrated knowledge of medical terminology and are well-trained in working with specialized audio transcription tools.
Always at Your Service!
Thanks to our global presence, we have a flexible and hybrid business model. This our teams to serve you on the spot, 24/7, across different time zones.
Full adherence to laws and regulations
With our medical transcription services being fully compliant with the GDPR and HIPAA, rest assured all your documents are in safe hands.
Fast and budget-friendly
We guarantee you that no matter what the deadline is, we will always make it. Running on a tight budget? No problem, our highly flexible pricing scheme is there for you!
Frequently Asked Questions About Medical Transcription Services
Healthcare professionals utilize professional medical transcription services to document patient records, clinical reviews, and any essential audio or video files. Once files are written in detail and reviewed for accuracy, physicians, nurses, and administrators can access the content as needed for workplace efficiency and precision.
A medical transcriptionist is a native speaker of the language who is also an expert in medical terminology. Their job is to manually process these audio recordings into written text and ensure that they are perfect and flawless in terms of facts, spelling mistakes, and typos.
For any medical transcription services provider to be considered reliable, it must have a team of highly qualified MT professionals. No less important than that, however, is that it must have a strong Quality Assurance (QA) team to make sure every document is flawless before handing it back to the client.
Doctors, nurse practitioners, and other healthcare providers dictate their confidential notes about each visit. Medical transcriptionists take these notes and transcribe them into a comprehensive record of the visit.
- Information is readily available for healthcare professionals.
- Makes documentation easier for physicians and hospitals.
- Helps doctors and other healthcare professionals save time and focus on their jobs.
There are various different types of medical transcriptions however some of the common ones are:
- Medical conference transcription
- Symposium and conference transcription
- Round table transcription
- Medical presentation subtitling and closed captioning
- Podcast and infomercial transcription
- Training and educational video transcription
The demand for medical transcription services in increasing rapidly as large number of patient information and medical research studies are being conducted globally. The future of medical transcription relies heavily on AI (artificial intelligence) and speech recognition technology which will result in the process being both cost and time efficient.
Medical transcription services are often required by medical and healthcare professionals. Hospitals, physicians, insurance companies and healthcare/medical communications agencies require medical transcription services from time to time.
All of our communications including audio/video files are stored on our secured servers. Upon completion of any project, any audio/video files are deleted from our hard drives and moved to the archives. Those files are automatically deleted from our archives after 3 weeks.
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We can provide customized transcriptions in 120+ languages.
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