Applying The Best Practices in Your Medical Transcription

Feb 8

One of the most challenging tasks in medical practice is medical transcription. The reason behind it is that it needs the medical records to be transcribed through speech recognition software. This task becomes challenging when the recordings are unclear. Transcribing these recordings with extreme precaution is highly essential. This is because it involves transcribing patients’ actual medical records, and if there is an error in it, it might cause a great loss! Therefore, medical transcription should be handled by a top medical transcription company. By outsourcing medical transcription services from UControl Billing, a practice can ensure that standard quality is maintained.

As accurate medical transcription is extremely important for a medical practice, we have gathered some of the best transcriptions practices that should be applied in order to avoid medical transcription errors. Keep reading on to know everything about medical transcription services!

Best Practices To apply in Your Medical Transcription

Here are a few medical transcription practices that will help your healthcare practice to grow and flourish without causing any errors!

Utilize Good Quality Transcription Equipment

In order to transcribe without making any errors, it is essential to have the right hardware as well as the software. A few devices that are very important in medical transcription include high-quality laptops or computers, a high-end USB headset that has noise-canceling capabilities, good transcribing software, a text expander program, a medical terminology dictionary, and a foot pedal that will make transcribing easier!

Listen Carefully to the Voice-Recorded File

There are different methods through which a healthcare physician sends the dictation to the top medical transcription company. Some physicians use the toll-free number to the medical transcription company’s database. The transcriptionist of the medical transcription services provider then directly accesses the recording from there and then converts it into a text document. In some cases, the physician sends the documents that are generated via voice recognition software for editing.

Another way includes recording the dictation via an audio recorder and then uploading it to the medical transcription company’s secure server. The transcriptionist then downloads it and transcribes it. Whichever way is used to send the recordings, the job of the medical transcriptionist is to listen to them carefully in order to produce accurate medical transcription. This is why excellent listening skill is essential for a medical transcriptionist!

Follow Professional Transcription Guidelines

Another practice to be applied in medical transcription is to follow professional transcription guidelines, this includes the following:

Listen to the full audio recording first

Transcribe one sentence at a time
Ensure a verbatim transcript
Utilize U.S. English
Do not paraphrase
Don’t leave blanks
Pay attention to spellings
Do not add additional information
Clarify the words or phrases that you might have not understood
Properly utilize capitalization, punctuation, and hyphens
Remove utterances like ahs, ums, stuttering, false starts, etc.

Stay Up-to-Date with Medical Terminology

In order to transcribe a physician’s dictation with accuracy, one needs to have full competence in the terminology used in medical dictation. This includes knowledge of terminologies related to different specialties as well as pharmaceutical terminology. A transcriptionist of a top medical transcription company stays updated with the new information as well as the research that is published in medical journals.

Cross-Check and Proofread Meticulously

It is very important to proofread as well as double-check generated medical transcriptions as the lab values are sometimes expressed as unclear abbreviations. In some cases, the software misinterprets the dosage amounts! This is why there are high chances of medical transcription errors. In order to avoid lab and pharmacy-related errors, one should:

Pay attention to physicians dictation
Transcribe numerical values carefully
Double-check and verify information

In case the transcriptionist is unsure regarding some information, s/he should search online or may refer to the medical dictionary!

Prioritize Accuracy Over Speed

The accuracy of medical transcription is way more important than the speed at which it is produced. It is very important to avoid typing errors as they can compromise the transcription’s integrity! However, we can not avoid the importance of typing speed of a transcriptionist as well. The best medical transcription services providers have skilled transcriptionists who can simultaneously ensure accuracy as well as timely documentation.

Causes Of Medical Transcription Mistakes

Here are some of the factors that can cause medical transcription errors:

The transcriptionist might be unfamiliar or outdated when it comes to the medical jargon or terminologies that are in use.
The quality of the audio recording might be very low because it was recorded in an unprofessional manner.
The dictation of the physician might be unclear or too fast, due to which comprehending what is being said can be challenging. This might cause lab/dosage errors.
Words that have similar sounds but different meanings, like homophones, might cause some transcription errors—for instance, the words like hypertension and hypotension.
Wrong spelling of equipment and medications’ name can also cause medical transcription errors.
Sometimes the format of the dictated reports might not be uniform, or it might miss some important information!
The final transcripts might not be gone through proofreading or the necessary quality assurance process.

When Should A Practice Outsource Medical Transcription Services?

Here are six points that should be considered before integrating medical transcription services into your practice’s operations:

Consider your practice’s workflow
Take into account the legal and regulatory considerations
Ensure that you read out everything in your contractual terms
Ensure that you only pay for what your practice needs
Ensure that the provider’s software interfaces well with your existing systems
Run thorough research of the top medical transcription company that you decide to outsource from!

Choose UControl Billing For Top-quality Medical Transcription Services

UControl Billing medical transcription services are one of the best! They provide a wide range of medical transcription services to numerous healthcare clients. This medical transcription company acknowledges the difficulties that a medical practice faces while hiring a skillful medical transcriptionist in order to transcribe the medical records accurately. This is why UControl Billing company provides a cost-effective alternative to digitizing a practice’s medical records. When your transcription operations are handled by such experts, your staff can focus on patient care.

If you are looking for reliable, accurate, timely, and reasonable medical transcription services, then stop looking and Get in touch with UControl today!