Medical Transcription Trends

You want to be a medical transcriptionist but you are clueless about where to begin. Where to find the right course, where to get the right job, how to make a career of the new profession – if these are the thoughts crossing your mind, we are here to help. First, let me ask you something: are you really ready for medical transcription?

Being ready for medical transcription involves understanding exactly what the profession expects of you and what you can expect of the profession. Do you think you can live up to the profession’s expectations? Will you be satisfied with what it has to offer to you? If your answer to these questions is ‘yes’, I think you are ready. Next, let’s look into the course you should enroll yourself into.

I assume you have spoken to some medical transcriptionists before deciding to become one. Ask them about the courses they have undergone. You can check Future MTs medical transcription courses as well. And don’t run away from computer-based or online courses. Those are equally good if you are a disciplined learner.

Now, let’s talk about getting a job. Ideally, a good institute will provide you with some kind of placement assistance. But you should also look on your own. And the Internet and the newspapers are not the only sources for looking for a medical transcription job. Visit the local hospitals and clinics and find out if they have an opportunity for you.

Make sure you make an informed decision about making medical transcription your career.

Any work that allows you the flexibility of taking it home has got to be lucrative. One of the reasons medical transcription draws crowds is that it allows you to work from home. Here are four big reasons to embrace home-based medical transcription.

You can save money being at home. That’s because home-based work means there is no commuting involved. Thus, you save the money you would otherwise spend on gas. And don’t forget the office wear. You don’t have to worry about that anymore either.

You can choose your own timings and fix your own hours. The home-based medical transcription job offers you flexibility in terms of working hours. You can choose when you want to work. While some people are at their productive best in the morning, others are productive in the night. You get to choose your work timings. However, it is important that you stick to a routine and not vary your timings every day.

This home-based job offers you the flexibility of choosing the kind of work you want to do. Here you get to say ‘no’ to work, something that doesn’t often happen in other jobs.

Now, let me discuss the most obvious reason. Home-based work attracts you because it mentions home, probably the most comfortable place on earth. You can set up your office space in your house the way you like. You can choose comfortable furniture and a comfortable and quiet setting for your work.

Having talked about the benefits of home-based medical transcription, I should warn you that it’s not everyone’s cup of tea. You’ll need additional dollops of discipline and self-motivation to handle this. So, are you ready?

You have learned that the entry into the medical transcription profession is easy. What makes it easy? And why is it easy when the profession is called a specialized and responsible one? We will try to answer these questions in today’s post.

Unlike many white collar professions, medical transcription doesn’t ask you for any formal qualifications. True, it does not matter what you studied and how you fared at academics. Does this mean that medical transcriptionists are not qualified? Well, no. It just means that one doesn’t need to possess any qualification to join the field. Medical transcriptionists acquire professional qualifications as they become a part of the industry.

The medical transcription aspirant is not asked for any kind of experience. Yes, you can make an entry even if you are a high school grad. It does not matter if you have ever worked in your life.

Another lucrative factor that draws people to medical transcription is that the profession doesn’t care whether you are 20 or 50. Your age does not matter as long as you can deliver good work. Also, you can be located anywhere in the world and still become a medical transcriptionist.

Now, we have found out that entry is easy. But why is it easy? Shouldn’t there be a filter of some sort to make sure only the eligible become medical transcriptionists. The profession doesn’t lay out any prerequisites because it expects an aptitude of medical transcription aspirants, not degrees and experience. The profession doesn’t want to have stringent eligibility requirements that make the ones with the right aptitude stay out of the field.

While the profession welcomes everyone with open arms, only the ones with the right aptitude can survive in the field. This is why we insist you figure out if you have the potential before you commit to the medical transcription profession.

Now that you have become a medical transcriptionist, how do you improve your game, er, your work? Your focus should be on improving your productivity and quality. I have come up with a list of ways you can become a better medical transcriptionist than you already are.

Always work with a plan. When you start your working day, plan your work. Approaching work without a plan is likely to make you lose track of time, miss on deadlines, or ruin quality.

Never take too much on your plate. Irrespective of whether you work in an office or at home, refrain from taking too much on your plate. If you are a home-based medical transcriptionist, you may want to take on more work for additional income. However, doing so is definitely going to affect the quality of your work, thereby spoiling your goodwill.

Inform about consistent poor recordings upfront. When you find incomprehensible recordings coming your way rather too frequently, you need to raise an alarm. If you are employed, mention it to your employer. If you are self-employed, inform the doctors who are recording the information. More often than not, doctors are not aware that they are doing a bad job. Letting them know will make life easier for both you and them.

Never flag documents irresponsibly. A medical transcriptionist is supposed to flag a document when some critical information remains missing in it even after follow-ups with doctors and extensive research. Now, flagging a document without adequate research or the failure to flag a document that needs to be flagged is wrong. If you know when to flag a document, you are doing a good job.

As a medical transcriptionist, you should be good at managing time. A laid-back attitude or a hurried one are both detrimental to your career.

An efficient medical transcriptionist is one who understands the importance of his/her profession. Are you an efficient medical transcriptionist?

After working as a medical transcriptionist for some time, you may wonder if you should start working from home. At times, medical transcription aspirants become interested in the profession because it allows the flexibility to work from home. However, that should never be the main consideration when going for medical transcription. The profession is a challenging one; home adds to its challenges. Let’s look at why we insist that you don’t get carried away by the home factor of medical transcription.

Are you interested in home-based work because it will be comfortable? Home will provide you comfort but you cannot afford to become comfortable if you want to meet those quality goals and chase those deadlines.

Can you make sure you will have the perfect home-office? If your office-space is a hangout zone or frequented by family and guests, it is definitely not fit to be an office. Medical transcription requires you to be extremely focused, and you cannot guarantee focus in such an office space.

If you cannot work in isolation, home-based medical transcription is not for you. Some people abhor co-workers while others adore them. Now, if you fall in the latter category, you may not be able to live with the absence of co-workers.

If the thought of irregular work, and thus, irregular income scares you, any home-based profession will not work for you. A home-based transcriptionist has to be prepared to handle ups and downs in terms of work.

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) has laid some guidelines to ensure security and confidentiality of medical information. As a home-based transcriptionist, you have to take measure to conform to those. If you cannot, stick to working from a regular office.

When you work from home, you become responsible for every aspect of your work. You are even responsible for ensuring that work keeps coming in for a regular inflow of money. As a home-based medical transcriptionist, therefore, apart from ensuring high quality work, you have to make sure that you keep getting work regularly. In today’s post, we will discuss ways to make that happen.

Start with getting your services advertised in the classified section of the local newspapers. The print is far from being dead. People still check the classifieds. Next, get yourself listed in the yellow pages.

You should add your medical transcription services to listings such as Craigslist. People prefer looking up services on this rather than looking them up through a search engine.

As a home-based medical transcriptionist, you should have a solid network closer home. A visit to the nearest hospital may fetch you a big opportunity. So, keep in touch with local hospitals and clinics. Even if they don’t have something for you now, they will get in touch with you in the future. So, leave a copy of your resume with them.

Now, coming to your job hunt on the Internet, submit your resume on job websites. The first few offers may not be great but these job sites will open the door of opportunities for you. Also, submit your resume to medical transcription companies. Many such companies outsource work to freelancing transcriptionists. Go through the websites of these companies, study their requirements, and send them your CV.

Working from home is not everyone’s cup of tea. You have got to be strong willed and highly disciplined to handle the challenges home-based work brings along.

Medical transcription involves converting voice information into text and making sense of it to create medical records. Now, this job requires certain software. Can you tell me what all you need?

For starters, you need an audio software with playback controls to help you listen to the voice recordings properly. Then you need a word processor to type out the text in. Getting hold of the speech-recognition software at this point can make your work a little easier and help you save time. This is because this software can roughly transcribe medical records. It doesn’t do the work for you but it definitely takes the pressure off by helping you a bit.

While the word processor is equipped to check the spelling of the regular English words, you need to take care that you don’t misspell medical terms. This is why the medical spell checker is a must have. It ensures that you do not make errors while writing those medical terms. Along with the medical spell checker, get yourself the medical dictionary. It comes to your rescue when you are not sure about some medical terms. Again, this will ensure that you don’t make grave errors in your medical records.

You will also need the medical abbreviation expander. This expander helps save you save time by using shortcuts as it expands abbreviations of medical terms for you. You cannot go wrong with this tool at your disposal.

Irrespective of whether you work in an office or at home, you need the antivirus and the firewall. You have to make sure your antivirus and firewall software are up to date.

Is there any other software you would like to add to the list? Let us know.

Before you decide to become a medical transcriptionist you need to look into the various pros and cons of the profession. If you have been following this blog, you already know how important that is. However, there is something else you should find out before stepping into this industry. Find out what the medical transcriptionist does. Find out what his/her duties and responsibilities are. Shouldn’t that be obvious, you wonder. The medical transcriptionist is responsible for creating medical records by transcribing medical information. Yes, but this job requires a number of smaller but significant tasks. Let’s have a look.

The medical transcription work is such that you are likely to encounter incomprehensible recordings more than occasionally. In such instances, you are required to follow up with doctors for the missing or incomprehensible information in the dictations.

When you cannot retrieve a missing piece of information and no amount of research can help you get the right information, you are required to flag the medical document. However, it is important not to flag a document just because you have been too lazy to research. Flagging inappropriately can cause you to lose your goodwill.

As a medical transcriptionist, you need to ensure consistency of all kinds in the transcribed record. You have to ensure that there are absolutely no spelling errors. You also have to ensure accuracy of grammar in the transcribed text.
The medical transcriptionist does not just transcribe information; he/she is required to create medical records that are meaningful, complete, and accurate. You should join this field only if you are ready to take on this responsibility.

The process of becoming a medical transcriptionist includes undergoing an in-depth training in medical transcription. It becomes important to choose just the perfect course or you may have your basics messed up. Now, how do you look for a medical transcription course? Do you look up the term “medical transcription course” on Google, and then click links randomly? You will get as many as 50,000 results in a fraction of a second. But how do you choose a course that is good and right for you?

First, analyze each course and compare it with the rest of the courses. Begin by checking if the course conforms to the guidelines specified in COMPRO. COMPRO stands for the competency profile for medical transcription education programs as laid down by the Association for Healthcare Documentation Integrity (AHDI).

Next, find out how many hours of dictation is included in the course. You should also make sure that the dictation is recorded by doctors and not by role-playing actors. You can check with the former students about this.

You should also find out if the completion of the course is followed by some placement assistance. You need this to make a smooth entry into the field. A training institute, therefore, should have good references in the medical transcription industry.

Ask former students about the instructors at the institute. The course instructors should have a considerable experience working as medical transcriptionists. Only such instructors can help you prepare for the challenges in the medical transcription profession.

Some told you that the medical transcription profession is good. They also told you that it is challenging. Who should you believe? Are you confused? Is there something that is stopping you from becoming a medical transcriptionist? Let’s look into your fears about the profession.

Are you not sure if there are medical transcription opportunities in the future? Do you know the recession could not affect the profession? The US Department of Labor projects that the rate of growth of medical transcription opportunities will be more than the average of all other occupations in the near future. And it is obvious given that the ever increasing and aging population will keep the demand for medical records growing.

Are you afraid every Tom, Dick, or Harry can become a medical transcriptionist? The fact that the profession allows an easy entry may make you believe that anyone can become a medical transcriptionist. The medical transcriptionist is a specialized professional. The training is what specializes you but not everyone can handle the challenges in the profession. Not everyone possesses the aptitude to cope with the challenges of the profession.

Are you concerned if you will make enough money? You will be paid depending on the level of expertise in the medical transcription field and the number of hours you spend on the job. According to the Occupational Employment Statistics report by the United States Department of Labor, the mean hourly wage of a medical transcriptionist was $15.84 in May 2008.

Does the voice recognition software worry you? Oh, that should be the least of your worries. The software requires a lot of time and effort from doctors, something that doctors don’t have time for. Moreover, the results delivered by the software are not accurate. Thus, the software is now being used as an aid to the medical transcriptionist’s work instead of becoming a threat to his/her job.

If there is something else you would like to know, drop in a comment, and we will be glad to help.