The Evolution Of Medical Transcription

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One of the most important aspects for physicians to delivering quality patient health care is documenting the patient visit. In the past physicians would perform the arduous tasks of hand-writing these reports, which would occasionally contain illegible writing, and file these visits accordingly. These same reports would often be sent to referring physicians, via fax or courier service, and the referring physician would decipher the hand-written reports in order to properly treat the patient. Additionally, these same reports were necessary for physicians to be adequately reimbursed for their services from health insurance companies. To alleviate the inefficiencies in the process, health insurance providers began to required physicians to have typed reports and thus began the transition to transcription services.

The medical transcription service industry began by having a person type these reports for the physician. Physicians would document the patient’s visit in an audio format, either on cassette or digital recorder, send these audio files to a transcriptionist (located ...
... within the hospital/office or elsewhere), who would then type the report and return it to the physician. This process improved the existing way physicians handled reports, however, there was still room for improvement. Many transcriptionists developed transcription services which would require audio files to be picked up and hand delivered to a physician’s office – taking up to 1 week to return the documents to the physician. These same reports were also in a hard copy format and any request for corrections would lengthen the process. With the help of technology, medical transcription was able to change once more.

Through the use of the latest technology, medical transcription was able to evolve with improved efficiency across all aspects. Transcription services would be able to utilize toll-free dictation services and eliminate the time consuming process of retrieving physical audio files. In turn, completed reports could be sent back to physicians within a matter of hours instead of weeks. To improve efficiency further, some medical transcription companies offered the ability to make changes to a completed document prior to printing – saving valuable time for physicians. Web-based medical transcription also encompassed features such as a report tracking, automated routing to referring physicians and convenient anytime-anywhere access.

As healthcare demands continue to change, so will the medical transcription. Transcription services are critical to the healthcare community and will continue to be an integral part of delivering quality patient care.

For more information about Medical Transcription Service, please visit www.intivia.com