How Medical Transcription Works

MEDTRANS JOBS

How Medical Transcription Works



Many of the medical facilities outsource transcription for
various reasons. For the convenience of the physicians and
hospitals, most of the transcription service providers will have
a wide variety of options to send us the dictations and to
receive transcriptions: Toll free telephone lines Digital and
cassette tape hand held recorders Dictation servers
Transcriptions via secure e-mail, secure file transfer protocol
or website data bank Transcriptions via fax or remote internet
printer



Dictation on toll free telephone lines: This is a
dedicated computerized system that allows the physicians to call
in from any phone, including cellular, and dictate. Once the
toll free number is dialed voice prompts will guide through the
process, which will enable the physicians to dictate. Each
physician will be given a unique id. Many dial-n-dictate
programs are very physician-friendly and prompts are given for
each step. For the convenience of the physicians facilities like
rewind, replay, save, abort, fast forward etc are also
available. The chances of losing dictations are very remote
eliminating the need for re-dictation.





Digital hand held recorders: If the physician does not
want to dial the numbers every time and do not want to be bound
to a phone, digital hand held recorder is the best alternative.





A digital voice recorder is smaller or about the same size of an
hand-held tape recorder and is operated like one.

Voice is recorded on internal / removable memory cards like
those used in digital cameras. Each card can take up to 10 hours
of dictation. It can be plugged into a computer interface and
the voice can be sent to the transcription company via Internet.
The voice can be saved into the computer or deleted so that the
card can be reused. One can continue to record on another card
if one is full. Hence waiting for the files to transfer if
avoided. By keeping a few cards available, physician can record
wherever and whenever required.





It is very easy and takes very little time to remove the card
from the recorder, insert it into a computer interface and
transfer the files via Internet.

Most important point to remember is, all the transfers should be
secure and appropriate HIPAA compliant file transfer program has
to be selected like secure ftp, secure email





Dictation servers The transcription service provider can
log into the hospital dictation server if the hospital is
already having one.

Alternatively, inexpensive computer programs are available.
Physician can directly dictate to the computer using a wireless
or wired microphone. The transcription service
provider can access these dictations.





Getting back the Transcriptions Transcribed records can
be received by one of the following options: As an email
attachment. However the email service should be secure and HIPAA
compliant.

Transcriptions can be received via fax or remote internet
printer by which docuemtns are directly printed by the transcription service
provider at the physician's end. Transcriptions can be
downloaded from the secure ftp site provided by the medical
transcription service provider.

Some of the transcription
service providers like Vision Infonet will have online data
servers. Physicians can access these servers through a browser
to:

- Search, view and secure download the transcriptions anytime -
Transcriptions can be edited and saved online. - Respective
voice file can be played while editing - Electronic signature
can be added. - Automatic faxing the transcriptions can be done




About the author:
Ms. Leena Anil is a post graduate from Osmania University,
Hyderabad, India having more than 10 years of experience in
teaching and training medical
transcription. She designed and successfully implemented
training modules and trained more than 1000 candidates.