Outsourcing Medical Work

Outsourcing is the process where a third party (who may be located domestically or in a offshore country) is used to perform a company’s in-house work. Outsourcing has many benefits and may involve many different types of activities.

Medical outsourcing of health sector back office processes like transcription, coding, and billing is growing by the day. Medical outsourcing work groups in offshore Asian countries like India and the Philippines are constantly trained to be conversant in US guidelines and standards and services like medical transcription is delivered on a daily or even a few hours turnaround basis.

In recent years medical outsourcing has taken a different path where people are seen taking flights out of the US to get surgeries done. Expensive heart or spine surgeries from cheaper countries mean savings in tens of thousands of dollars. Look at this 2006 Time magazine article titled “Outsourcing Your Heart” at http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1196429,00.html

One of the main reasons for the high cost of medical expenses in the US has been due to the lack of competition. Countries like India are planning and focusing on their medical tourism industry where patients from around the world will come for getting high quality health services at competitive rates. As India is a developing country development growth in this type of surgery outsourcing has to develop gradually. But when it comes to processes like medical transcription or medical billing India and the Philippines have already become the world’s favorite destinations.

Outsource Strategies International (OSI) is a US based medical transcription company that offers total outsourcing solutions in medical transcription, medical billing, and medical coding.

Medical Billing Career

Medical billing is the process of submitting claims to insurance companies and following up to receive the payment for various speciality health services rendered by a health care provider. Medical billing is in itself a specialty area of work and professional medical billers are real experts at claim reimbursements.

Now if you are thinking of becoming a medical billing person, the foremost thing to do is to try and know a bit about the profession, the required skills and abilities and also determine which medical speciality area is preferable to you. It is also essential to know about medical transcription and the medical billing software.

All billing work can be outsourced to professional medical billers who will coordinate between the patient and the health providers/ doctors anytime during the claims process. Transcription work is usually outsourced to some third party who will be from a different location. It is the billing software that links the actual billing and the electronic documents and transcripts that are transcribed from audio recordings by the medical transcriptionist. All health service aspects have specific medical codes. The medical billing personnel must be familiar and also an expert in record keeping. He must also familiarize himself with the various medical codes besides being at ease with various other healthcare standards and certifications.

Medical billing professional can take the CMRS (Certified Medical Reimbursement Specialists) exam which is a voluntary, national credential for the medical billing profession. The CMRS designation is awarded by the Certifying Board of the American Medical Billing Association.For more details go to the AMBA (American Medical Billing Association ) website at, http://www.ambanet.net/AMBA.htm

Outsource Strategies International (OSI) is a US based medical transcription company that offers professional yet affordable services in medical billing, medical transcription and medical coding.

The Growing Need for Medical Transcription Outsourcing

Why it is that medical transcription outsourcing has become a big business today? Well it is just because one thing leads to other. In the earlier days medical secretaries just had to type out the reports dictated by the doctor after the rush time. Now it is different. For one so much more documentation is required and that too in such less time that a secretary will have time for nothing else. It has become mandatory for hospitals to keep digital records of all the patient details. Why?

Because every time a medical bill is being made there is the possibility that some insurance company is actually paying the bill. So unless we have perfect documentation of the disease the process of diagnosis medicines etc how can the billing be done? And with so much of growth in the volume of health care clients and hospitals /specialties, either a full time transcription team has to be arranged within the hospital premise or the transcription work has to be outsourced. Work is being sent to offshore locations for purely economic and turnaround time reasons. Thus today we have the fully evolved transcription outsourcing industry.

According the United States department of Labor, the world wide demand for medical transcription is set to reach 20 billion dollars. So if looking out for a career in Medical transcription now is a good time. What are basic requirements to become a good medical transcription professional? It is actually quite simple. One must have,

• A good knowledge of basic to advanced medical terminologies
• Good verbal communication and memory skills
• Ability to be accurate with numbers
• Skill in office equipment/computer
• Good listening skills
• Good verbal and written comprehension
• Ability to maintain records
• Above-average typing skills
• Good grammar/punctuation skill
• Proficiency in certain or multiple medical specialties

For availing of cost effective and highly professional medical transcription outsourcing services, do contact Outsource Strategies International (OSI) a US based company and BPO leader offering services in medical transcription, medical billing and coding.