TROTTS and Medical Transcription Turnaround Time

It is indeed a small Global world today. The Internet and globalization has made it possible to get back office work done half way round the globe as if it were being done in the next room. Medical transcription is one BPO service that is greatly appreciated because it involves critical medical data and involves medical billing, insurance claim and reimbursement. Hence all vendors have known the importance for a minimal TAT (Turn Around Time). Offshoring of work to Asian locations with about 12 hour time difference is a very naturally convenient feather in the Asian service provider's cap, especially for bigger and regular hospital transcription projects.

Different Turnaround times from 72 hrs to 24hrs to 12 hrs to a few hours to almost realtime transcription have been provided by the domestically outsourced agents as well as from these offshore locations using the latest state of art web technologies. Today you also have voice recognition software being used that instantly displays the "text form on screen" though of course it has to be humanly edited by the transcription professional or physician. However, faster need not necessarily always be better. Everything needs a standard and so does the transcription outsourcing industry. That is why TROTTS is here!

What is TROTTS? Well it stands for Transcribed Report Optimal Turnaround Time Standards (TROTTS). Last September the The AHIMA-MTIA Task Force on Transcribed Report Optimal Turnaround Time Standards (TROTTS) invited all transcription managers to participate in an industry survey. The TROTTS task force was given the responsibility to jointly developing recommended standards for transcribed report turnaround times on selected report types.

So what are the new standards of MT TATs, I mean TROTTS? If anxious, be there for the 19th Annual Conference of the Medical Transcription Industry to be held at Long Beach CA from April 23-26, 2008. Here is a link to it. http://www.mtia.com/Conference.cfm "The New Standards: TROTTS" is a topic on the agenda and will be presented by the MT Industry leader Sean Carroll. Sean Carroll has got the Smithsonian Computer World Award for technology innovation in healthcare for automated speech recognition applications and has been the elected president of the medical transcription's international trade association many times.

Here is the schedule of events for the conference we have been waiting for. http://www.mtia.com/downloads/MTIA%202008%20Schedule%20at%20A%20Glance.pdf

OSI (Outsource Strategies International) is a US based BPO pioneer and medical transcription company that offers professional domestic and offshore medical coding and medical transcription services.

Medical Transcription Program Approval

Today medical transcription has become an established and essential process for the health care sector and a profession that is well accepted and respected with increasing demands. There are many colleges and universities that provide medical transcription education and training programs at various levels. When we refer to the medical transcription approval process we are mentioning about the approval of such MT educational programs by the concerned authorities.

It was the Association for Healthcare Documentation Integrity (AHDI) that instituted the medical transcription program approval process. The Commission on Accreditation for Health Informatics and Information Management Education (CAHIIM) is the accreditation organization of AHIMA. The approval process was done to make sure that compliance with the AHDI Model Curriculum is maintained by different educational bodies so that it provides,

• Produce competent entry-level transcription professionals
• Good educational programming
• Good quality assurance
• Consistent education

Take a look at the Model Curriculum at,
http://www.ahdionline.org/scriptcontent/Downloads/ModelCurriculum.pdf

List of approved programs can be seen at, http://www.ahdionline.org/scriptcontent/mtapproved.cfm

The AHDI along with AHIMA (American Health Information Management Association) has established a certifying committee for the approval of medical transcription programs called the ACCP (Approval Committee for Certificate Programs). The ACCP approval is an ongoing process and must not be confused with a guarantee as there is no formal accreditation process for medical transcription programs.

More details are available at, http://www.ahdionline.org/scriptcontent/eduprogramapproval.cfm

Outsource Strategies International (OSI) is an Oklahoma based medical transcription company that offers professional outsourcing services in medical billing, medical coding and medical transcription to clients in the US and also globally.

The Medical Transcription Industry Association

Way back in 1989, Health Professions Institute sponsored and started a forum that was needed for the medical transcription managers and owners to interact and discuss the medical transcription business, its technology etc. Even though the AAMT (American Association of Medical Transcription) was already a very good source of related industry information, there was an unfulfilled need for forming an association that solely represented the interests of the MT business people. Thus gradually in October 1993, MTIA (Medical Transcription Industry Association) officially came into being. Its website is,http://www.mtia.com/index.cfm

MTIA is a not-for-profit trade association serving the needs of medical transcription companies, vendors, and health information management professionals. Its Mission is to create the environment in which the members can prosper, grow, and deliver the highest level of healthcare-documentation services.

Take a look at its board of directors at http://www.mtia.com/bod.cfm and MTIA Code of Ethics at http://www.mtia.com/CodeOfEthics.cfm

See details of the different types of memberships at https://www.mtia.com/MembershipCategories.cfm

MTIA membership application is available at https://www.mtia.com/MTIAMembershipApp.cfm

MTIA's Annual Conference for this year is scheduled for April 23-26, 2008 at Long Beach, California. Here is the schedule of events at the conference, https://www.mtia.com/downloads/MTIA%202008%20Schedule%20at%20A%20Glance.pdf

For outsourcing solutions in medical coding, medical billing and medical transcription services, do call the Oklahoma based medical transcription company OSI (Outsource Strategies International)

Medical Transcription: How to Ensure Good Quality Recordings

If you are representing a hospital that produces voice/dictation recordings which are outsourced / offshored outside your premises for medical transcription and conversion into typed text, then you must be very wary of the quality of your audio material recordings because it can directly affects the costs.

The main fact to remember is that taking care of your audio quality will greatly enhance the cost affectivity of your outsourcing campaign. How? Let me explain. Did you know that all transcription material that comes in for transcription is first assessed? The time taken and charges for transcription will depend on the quality of the recordings. Obviously with bad recording, transcription takes more time and so more work hours and higher charges of transcription. Some of the factors that affects the time /cost of transcribing that are considered while assessing a transcription /dictation recording include,

• Background noise level
• Clarity of recording
• Speed of speech
• Clarity of voice
• Number of speakers
• Accents of speakers
• Technical language used
• Content
• Collect essential details of the material transcribed
• Get details of all participants/leaders

So how does one go about creating good quality audio recordings for your transcription outsourcing provider? Well, essentially one has to make sure that the recording is done as perfectly as possible by,

• Making a test recording
• Minimize tape "hiss"
• Use digital recording
• Minimize background noise
• Use more microphones if more than two people
• Plan all breaks beforehand
• Avoid speakers from speaking among themselves
• Get all details of the speaker/participant (Gender/ title/ representation etc)
• Note Words/minute

Outsource Strategies International (OSI ) is an Oklahoma based medical transcription company that offers professional outsourced solutions in medical coding, medical billing and medical transcription service for clients globally.

Medical Transcription Rules for Preparing Reports

There are certain basic rules that must be followed by all the professionals in the medical transcription industry. The American Association for Medical Transcription (AAMT) style guide is very popular and is in use around the globe. The style guide guides the medical transcription professional in all the different aspects of transcription that includes topics spacing during typing of text,numbering/ numerical typing, punctuation, hyphenation, drug terminology, capitalization rules, measurements, symbols to be used, classification rules, proofreading and more.

Let me now mention about some of the important rules that must be followed during the transcription/preparation of various medical reports.

• While writing the history of the present illness it is preferred to use the present tense or a mixed tense.
• Use past tense only while writing about a past medical history.
• Type all allergies in capital
• The Assessment/Diagnosis/Impression report must be entirely in capital letters without abbreviations for any medical terminology. However measurement units can be abbreviated.
• Use past tense in discharge summaries
• If no allergies found, type "No known drug allergies."
• All major physical examination reports to be in the present tense
• Use the correct verb tense to communicate the appropriate time of the action.(even if the dictation is wrongly tensed)
• The title "Doctor" is to be written in full
• Capitalize brand name medications. One must not capitalize generic medications.
• Use Latin drug abbreviations.
• Arabic numerals must be use when referring to strength, dosage and directions in medication.

Take a look at the basic style guide with the Courtesy of Global Medical Transcription and MT Daily at http://www.mtdaily.com/style.html

If you are looking for a professional medical transcription company that can offer outsourced medical transcription service along with medical coding/billing, just call the Oklahoma based OSI (Outsource Strategies International).

Tips for Medical Transcription Dictation

Years back when I was in India, I knew a pharmacist who was the only one who could decipher everything our hospital's only physician scribbled /prescribed on his pad. (Many rural Indian hospitals still follow the system). Believe it or not, whenever the pharmacist took a day off or was on leave, the pharmacy would give out wrong medications that turned up to be tragic. We later solved the problem by getting a mobile phone for our pharmacist friend whom we called up even on his "off days" and clarified what the physician prescribed. Surprisingly he could solve the problem even over the telephone.

Today it is not bad handwriting but bad dictation. It indeed makes the medical transcriptionist's job more difficult and highly prone to mistakes. Further it causes waste of valuable time. So what can be the solution to this problem? Is it possible to have an exclusive transcription professional for each doctor so that he gets know the physician like the back of his hand?

Well here is a guide with tips to proper dictation that will be very useful for the physician to give good dictations and get error free transcripts. I recently came across a group of medical transcription from different specialty groups who all had similar types of requests/appeal for the dictating physicians /doctors.

• While dictating a difficult medical term it would be greatly appreciated if care is taken to see that the term gets well recorded via the microphone.
• Please start the dictation mentioning about the type/title of document that is been dictated instead of keeping the transcriptionist guessing about it till the end.
• Please avoid the tendency to summarize every thing/procedure and include everything in few long sentences. It would be ideal to present the facts in shorter and more communicative sentences if possible.
• Would appreciate if uncommon abbreviations are expanded and dictated when possible.
• Please move your face away for a moment from the microphone to sneeze/cough.
• Please finish your snack before beginning the dictation or keep it for afterwards.
• Never forget to mention the basic information like date/name/ summary etc
• Try and avoid talking fast/ yawns /hiccups while dictating.

Physicians/surgeons should be aware of the background sounds/ noise and how it can become a hindrance to listening to the dictation. Just a pause at such occasions would be greatly appreciated and can save a lot of time.

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

Surgery Medical Transcription

In any allopathic medical practice, surgery is an important aspect. Surgery transcription involves converting all the surgeon's voice tapes about a surgical procedure into neatly typed documents. And thus surgery transcription is an important specialty in medical transcription. Surgery transcriptions are used for settlement of insurance claims and legal matters.

Some of the different types of surgery transcription areas include,

• Dental surgery
• General Surgery
• Cardiovascular/thoracic surgery
• Abdominal/ gastrointestinal surgery
• Orthopedic surgery
• Obstetric and Gynecology surgery
• Neurosurgery
• Plastic surgery

The surgery transcription process can be very demanding from the medical transcriptionists as it requires a deep knowledge of various surgical procedures, surgical techniques and familiarity with the different medical and surgical equipment that is used during surgery. A good transcription professional will have a good knowledge of the anatomy of the human body and the various types of diseases that affect the various parts of the body.

A good knowledge of the different procedures and surgery performed along with familiarity with all related terminology will go a long way in correctly transcribing the surgeon's voice tapes without making mistakes. However in case of pending doubts it is always better for the medical transcription professional to check out directly with the surgeon who actually did the job. A lot of medical equipments are used by the surgeons that the medical surgery transcriptionist has to be familiar with. These can include knowledge of,

• Surgical instruments (Scissors / scalpels etc)
• Surgical Diathermy
• Endoscopic instruments
• Suction apparatus
• Anesthesia machine
• Pulseoximeter
• Plethysmographs
• Multi parameter patient monitors
• Defibrillators
• Autoclaves
• Infusion devices
• Autoclaves

Outsource Strategies International (OSI) is a US based company that offers a wide range of medical transcription, medical billing and coding services to the clients across the US, Canada the UK and Australia.