Tuesday, January 22, 2008

Medical Transcription Professional: See Where He Comes In!

You are not well and have decided to see a specialist about that nagging pain. You go and start talking about the problem to the doctor. Now you may need to talk about the past history of the problem which you will have to remember and maybe rack your brains to remember everything just as it happened. (Ideally you must have some past papers and also made specific notes about the problem).

Anyway, after you have explained your problems and also answered all the queries of the doctor, he will physically examine you and also prescribed for various laboratory tests before he is able to make a diagnosis/differential diagnosis. Only after diagnosis does the doctor comes up with the plan of treatment which he explains and gives you / your family members the required instructions/prescriptions that must be followed. Finally as you come out of the doctor's office, you see the other people waiting for their turn to get in and talk to the doctor. But before someone else walks into the doctor's cabin there is something the doctor does after you have left. Well it's just that the entire encounter he had with you is quickly recorded into a voice recording device (either a cassette recorder, telephone or some other device).

In a few minutes the doctor is on to another patient, another issue and thus the voice recordings continue. By the end of the day/session the doctor has seen many patients requiring various types of treatments. Now where is all that critical patients' data? Can we expect the doctor to remember some of the details? Certainly not! Well as of now, most of the information is on tape and tomorrow the doctor or someone else (like say the insurance people) may need to know exactly what happened with say, patient number 6 who came in last Monday?. Should they be given access to those voice recordings? Can they follow the doctor's rumblings? No indeed, everything has to be neat, and in paper. But then the doctor can't type nor does he have the time for paper work. So who does all that work of converting that technical "doctor talk" into a typed document? You guessed it!

OSI (Outsource Strategies International) is an Oklahoma based domestic and offshore outsourcing solutions provider, for medical transcription, medical billing and coding.

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