In any average sized medical transcription unit one will come across a team of people who are seen executing the project. Like in any team, medical transcription work also requires the services of team members with different skill sets that will have to be put to use together to get the required quality of output. The common hierarchies of people who form a core medical transcription team include,

 

 

The medical transcriptionist is the front liner, working at the very first stage of making of the transcript. What does the medical transcriptionist do? Well it is his job to listen to the audio tapes and the physician’s dictations, type them up, make a transcript and thoroughly check out its contents. No wonder one of the most preferred skills a transcriptionist should have is the active listening skill besides the knowledge to understand all the technical details/medical terms that will be the main part of the dictation. All major flaws, if any, will have to be identified at this stage itself. The quality of a professional medical transcriptionist is directly evaluated /graded based on the quantity/quality of the transcripts produced by him.

 

After basic transcription, the work is now passed on by the transcriptionist to the next level of the team, who consist of the quality editors. What do the quality editors do? Well as the name suggests, the quality editors have to edit the transcript, which means, looking out for finer errors (such as spelling mistakes, incorrect words and proper formatting). The QA has to make sure that the transcript has the necessary qualities and is ready for release to the client. A high degree of accuracy that is close to over 99% is a must for medical transcription.

 

A medical transcription team that is located in an offshore location like India or the Philippines has to work within a deadline. Usually the turnaround time currently is within 24 or 48 hours. But there are medical transcription projects that have TAT (turnaround time) as less as a few hours. The transcription team has to get their act together every day so that files can be uploaded via the Internet to the client (usually a hospital) daily at the same time. Needless to say the medical transcription team has to be supported with a good state of the art infrastructure and technology for them to be able to work and consistently deliver accurate transcripts.

The author of this article is Ricci Mathew of OSI (Outsource Strategies International), a US based company that offers services in Medical Coding, Medical Billing and Medical Transcription for clients across the US.