As a medical professional, keeping clinical records is an integral part of your practice. They help you improve the quality and continuity of care, and in many places around the world, you also have a legal obligation to retain medical information about your patients.
Unfortunately, making these notes can be a challenge when you’re seeing patients. The average healthcare professional is extremely busy throughout their day, so there isn’t always time or a pen handy to jot down notes.
Dictating your notes onto a tape recorder or voice app makes your life easier, but it does pose a new question. What do you do with this audio file when you can’t attach it to a patient’s folder?
The answer is in specialised medical transcription. As a full-service translation agency, LingArch can help you convert this audio file into a written document with our medical transcription services. Keep scrolling to learn more about these services and why anyone in the medical field might find them vital to their work.
What is Medical Transcription?
Medical transcription is a process that converts spoken word notes and observations into text. Some healthcare professionals transcribe dictated notes in-house, but many more out-source this task to a professional transcription service like LingArch.
A medical transcription specialist works by listening dutifully to an audio file and copying down every single word they hear. After editing and proofing their copy, they’ll create a word-perfect transcript of the audio or video, which can be made available as a physical document or an electronic file.
Today, most medical records have gone digital. In the UK, the GP2GP programme helps many general practitioners computerise their patient records, so it’s easier to share files when a patient transfers between practices.
While general practitioners and nurses frequently rely on transcribed notes, any healthcare professional may require these services, including surgeons, psychiatrists, cardiologists, technicians, dentists, professors, and more.
Medical professionals may use transcription services to convert dictated notes from a variety of sources, including:
- Consultations
- Examinations
- Analysis of laboratory reports and other documents
- Operation notes
- Referrals and recommendations
- Notes taken during lectures
- Clinical research data
- Discharge summaries
Why Do You Need Medical Transcription?
Medical transcription is incredibly important for a long list of reasons. Here are some of them below.
Continuity of Care
First and foremost, transcribing your notes makes it easier to keep your patient records up-to-date and accurate. As their primary physician, having comprehensive notes helps you make informed decisions regarding their care because you’ll be able to see their entire medical history.
Referrals and Transfers
When it’s necessary to involve a specialist, your concise record keeping will help you hand off patients or coordinate their treatment with this new healthcare professional. Your records will give them a better understanding of your patient’s background and previous care, so they can adjust their treatment to better fit your patient’s needs.
Translations
In some cases, the doctor and patient don’t speak the same language. Perhaps you’re treating a newly landed immigrant whose medical files are in another language. Or maybe, your patient comes home from travelling abroad recovering from a staph infection.
When physicians and patients face a language barrier, our medical translation services can help you find common ground. Here at LingArch, our transcription specialists are also talented linguists who can translate medical notes as necessary.
Insurance Claims
In many places around the world, patients rely on private health insurance to pay for basic check-ups and more complex procedures. Most insurance companies will review a patient’s medical records when evaluating claims and before offering a policy. The quality of your notes could help or hinder your patient’s ability to receive a pay-out and pay your bills.
Court or Arbitration
One day, you might have to submit your medical records to court to prove the nature and extent of a patient’s injuries. Keeping complete records is also a good idea in case a patient ever takes you to court. You’ll be able to use your files to defend against a complaint or claim of negligence.
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How Can Medical Transcription Services Help?
When your notes are used for diagnosis, treatments, insurance claims, and more, transcription can be a matter of life and death. It’s important you hire a professional transcription service for this critical task over in-house staff or speech-to-text software.
Industry Experience
At LingArch, we have a strict policy that requires our transcription skills to have a degree in medical transcription and several years of experience transcribing video and audio files.
With a solid background in the medical and life sciences, our team of medical transcribers recognize industry-specific terms, acronyms, procedures, medication, dosages, and conditions.
In addition to these transcribing services, we also provide medical document translation for a variety of companies in the healthcare industry.
In the past, we’ve helped healthcare practitioners translate the following documents:
- Brochures
- Clinical trial agreements
- Consent forms
- Patient diaries
- Patient education materials
- Pharmaceutical translation of labels
Accuracy
Thanks to this experience, our medical transcription services promise accurate records. Between the initial transcription and our final proofing, we create letter-perfect notes every time.
This comes as a contrast to using speech recognition software. Speech recognition software relies on powerful AI to convert the spoken word to text without any human intervention.
As advanced as voice recognition and dictation tools are today, this AI still suffers from bugs. Acronyms, complicated medical terms, or heavily accented speakers can pose an insurmountable challenge, resulting in critical errors in your records.
Inaccurate records may level serious harm to your patients, so it’s vital you work with transcribers who guarantee the utmost accuracy in their work.
A Human Touch
Let’s face it — physicians aren’t infallible. Sometimes, you can misspeak in the original dictation, causing confusion or inaccuracies in your notes. An AI will transcribe these errors word-for-word, but a human listener will be able to flag any potential mistakes and correct them before they cause harm.
Time Sensitivity
Typing up notes can be a time-intensive project for in-house staff. If you rely on nurses or administrative assistants to transcribe records, there might be a significant delay before you see your files updated simply because these professionals are busy with their normal duties.
The specialists assigned to your project have no other priority than your notes. Here at LingArch, we have teams stationed all over the world, and we’re willing to work nights and weekends to hit important deadlines. This guarantee extends to all our healthcare translation services, including translating patient files and doctor’s notes.
Confidentiality
Privacy is of the utmost concern for our clients, which is why we handle your medical records with care. We have legal transcribers and translation experts on staff to help navigate these issues, ensuring we’re compliant with pertinent privacy and security legislation, such as the EU General Data Protection Regulation and the US Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA).
Get in Touch for More Information
Medical transcription plays a critical role in the healthcare industry. It helps you organize notes and enhance the continuity of care between physicians while providing the backbone of insurance and legal paperwork.
To ensure your transcribed notes are up to these monumental tasks, hire medical transcription agency to convert your audio and video notes to text.
Please reach out today if you need help transcribing your notes and observations. Our medical transcription specialists produce accurate work on a variety of projects and deliverables. To learn how to enlist our transcription services, you can call us, book a free call back, or request a free quote.