What is Medical Transcription?
Medical transcription is the process of turning the audio reports ...
Will medical transcriptionists be replaced by voice recognition systems? Computers are great, but they can’t do everything a human being can. A human is much more reliable than a computer, and when you’re talking medical transcripts, reliability is everything!
If you’re thinking about working as a medical transcriptionist, here’s what you need to know about the future of medical transcription.
Medical transcription is the process of listening, interpreting, typing, and formalising medical recordings. But it’s not just about transcribing, it’s also about editing voice recognition draft reports and proofreading the reports. This is all done by a medical transcriptionist who possesses skills and knowledge in medical lexicon, anatomy, physiology, language, grammar, and word-processing programs. It’s their job to ensure that medical records are accurate.
The importance of accuracy is what makes medical transcriptionists valuable. Voice recognition software can be used for medical transcription, but many mistakes can be made when the voice is speaking complex medical terms. Many words sound similar and doctors sometimes make mistakes in their speech. A medical transcriptionist will be able to catch both these vocal errors and any typed errors created by voice recognition programs.
What’s more, medical transcription benefits the medical industry in many ways. It helps management to process the bills and do other work, and it helps the physician, patient and insurance company to understand the treatment given and other diagnoses. Plus, a medical transcriptionist can efficiently translate the transcription content in the language required.
The future of medical transcription looks bright, but if you want to stay updated and ahead of your competitors, you must embrace the changes in the market and follow the trends.
Here are the top three trends to follow this year and onwards:
There have been several advancements in healthcare technology and systems, including:
There’s a growing trend in both overseas and domestic medical transcription outsourcing. Overseas transcribers are being employed to create transcriptions in order to save on costs, while domestic transcribers are needed to fix medical reports that don’t comply with national standards. Additionally, more companies are outsourcing medical transcription services to reliable third-party service providers.
The increase in outsourcing is mainly due to the following reasons:
The advances in technology and increase in outsourcing are driving growth in the medical transcription market. In particular, they’ve led to a rise in the value of skilled medical transcriptionists and in the number of third-party service providers and new emerging markets.
Trained personnel are beneficial for medical transcription outsourcing so the demand for them will continue to rise. You can expect to find transcribers who’ve had years of training to learn different methodologies and scientific terminologies, making them very useful in the medical transcription field.
On the other hand, the number of third-party service providers are expected to double in the future as more companies focus on outsourcing medical transcription services to reliable third-party service providers. There’s also a lot of new markets emerging in various parts of the world, which have skilled and trained personnel who can handle medical transcription with ease. Healthy competition in the market will help to improve service quality and increase the value of experienced transcribers.
Medical transcriptionists are here to stay. Doctors may use voice recognition systems for transcribing medical reports because it’s easier and faster, but they need accuracy in their reports and they don’t have time to edit and proofread reports they create on a computer. Provided you have the skills and knowledge, you can protect your future as a medical transcriptionist as the need will always be there.
Moreover, people tend to live longer these days. The more older people there are, the more doctor visits there’ll be, and more reports need to be dictated. Patient demand will continue to fuel the medical transcription field for many years to come.
SyberScribe is a leading provider of transcription services to the medical industry. We offer rapid turnaround times and accurate transcriptions through our state-of-the-art transcription platform. If you’re ready to take the plunge, why not check out the SyberScribe jobs page for more information on starting work as a medical transcriptionist.