Benefits of Outsourcing Medical Transcription

Undertaking medical transcription in-house would imply that the healthcare facility has to manage people, records, HIPAA compliance, technology, maintenance of equipment, turnaround time and all other variables associated with the medical transcription services besides its core business of health care. Medical transcription outsourcing makes things immensely simpler and hospitals and healthcare centers in the U.S. and UK are increasingly outsourcing medical transcription work to offshore locations. Some of the benefits of medical transcription outsourcing are:

1. Cost Effective

One of the main advantages of outsourcing Medical transcription services to offshore locations is that comparable services are offered in these countries at highly competitive rates as compared to the industry standards prevalent in the U.S. Besides the built-in cost benefits are many:

Lower per line rate
Lower direct labor costs
Lower costs in HR, administrative and training areas
Lower annual maintenance costs for maintenance of digital and transcription equipment

2. Leverages Industry Experience

Clients stand to benefit from the significant industry experience that medical transcription service providers such as Outsource2india has. These service providers have had substantial experience working on an array of medical records such as:

Operative Note
Discharge Summary
Progress Note
Emergency Room Procedure etc.

One of the benefits of outsourcing medical transcription is that service providers cross-leverage their industry experience across customers producing superior records of high accuracy.

3. Leverage Time Zone Differentials of Offshoring Locations

The time zone differential between the U.S. and India works to the advantage of clients as medical records are downloaded, transcribed and transmitted back overnight for access by health practitioners in the U.S., the following working day. This ensures the fastest turnaround time in the industry.

4. High Quality and Accurate Medical Records

Medical transcription service providers adhere to globally standardized, HIPAA compliant Medical Transcription Process and follow through with stringent multi-level QA procedures. The QA procedures involve:

The QA procedures involve:

Editing
Proofreading
Reviewing of completed records

Medical transcription service providers measure performance and impose penalties so that prescribed quality levels and turnaround times are adhered to. This is one of the significant benefits of medical transcription outsourcing.

5. Reduced Infrastructure Investment

Running a full-fledged medical transcription service involves investing in high end dictation equipment as well as state-of-the-art software for transmission, downloading, typing and submitting dictations. Health facilities in the U.S. stand to benefit from medical transcription outsourcing as they do not have to block investments in expensive medical transcription equipment.

6. Reduced HR Responsibility in Hiring, Training and Administration

Human Resources departments of healthcare facilities and hospitals can substantially reduce time, resources and effort spent on hiring, training and maintaining medical transcription staff on their payroll. Medical transcription is required across all departments and functionalities, 24x7 including on-call and emergency room procedures.

This means a fairly intensive staff requirement which entails sizeable hiring, payroll processing and administrative responsibilities, all of which are dispensed with if the medical transcription process is outsourced.

7. Overcome High Attrition Rates in the U.S. Transcription Industry

The medical transcription services sector in the U.S., and anywhere else in the world, are characterized by high attrition rates. One of the benefits of outsourcing medical transcription processes is that hospitals remain unaffected by high employee turnover levels.

8. Manage Seasonal Fluctuations in Staffing

The workflow in medical transcription services in the U.S. is affected by seasonal fluctuations. In winter patient consultations are generally on the rise and during holiday seasons such as Christmas and Thanksgiving hospitals are grossly understaffed. One of the advantages of outsourcing medical transcription services to offshore locations is that these seasonal fluctuations in staffing and patient capacity need not affect workflows and productivity.

9. Improved Report Accessibility

Transcribed patient reports remain available on the service provider's secure servers for two years. A significant advantage of medical transcription outsourcing is that it allows secure, password-protected users to access and search old medical records with powerful key word tools. They can view and print or distribute medical documents to multiple destinations through the internet, ensuring high levels of patient confidentiality at each stage.

Medical Transcription Outsourcing to India

India has a strong market share in medical transcription outsourcing because of its large resource of young, college-educated and productive workforce. The dominant use of English as the main medium of communication is another cause for India's traditional edge in medical transcription outsourcing. Exposure to English language and the influence of western media such as movies, TV channels and books makes the average Indian familiar with the American usage and accent. Best-in-class medical transcription training methodologies shore up the inherent advantage that India offers in medical transcription outsourcing.

The medical transcription outsourcing industry in the country can loosely be organized into the following:

Indian subsidiaries of the large U.S.-based players: The majority of medical transcription service providers in India are subsidiaries of U.S.-based medical transcription companies. They are aligned with the U.S. parent company in training processes, systems, technology, billing and client relationship management.
Medium sized Indian medical transcription firms: These are medium-to-small Indian companies with a limited marketing presence in the U.S. These sometimes function as franchisees or vendors to the larger players. But they have growing clout in the market and are increasingly seen as strong contenders for delivering quality medical transcription services.
Small independent firms: These employ fewer transcriptionists and rely largely on work outsourced from the first two groups.

Read more about Outsource2india's medical coding, radiology and teleradiology services.

Contact Outsource2india here to outsource your medical transcription requirements.