Law will boost e-prescribing, HHS secretary says

Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt said today he expects the e-prescribing incentives and penalties in the Medicare bill passed this month to have a profound effect on the adoption and use of e-prescribing.

Although President Bush vetoed the bill, Congress overrode the veto, and Kerry Weems, acting administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, said at a news conference that the administration supports the bills e-prescribing provisions and will work to implement them.

Leavitt said CMS will hold a conference sometime this fall on e-prescribing to give doctors an opportunity to air any concerns they might have about the administrations program.

Experts say fewer than 10 percent of doctors use e-prescribing, but the administration wants to increase that percentage. Weems said the technology could save CMS $156 million in five years.

E-prescribing also has advantages for doctors, patients, pharmacists and those who pay for drug benefits outside Medicare. Dr. James King, a family physician in Tennessee and president of the American Academy of Family Physicians, said at the news conference that e-prescribing definitely improved the care that I provide to my patients.

However, he acknowledged that he does not always submit prescriptions electronically for a variety of reasons, such as knowing that particular pharmacies do not accept e-prescriptions and the inability to prescribe controlled substances under Drug Enforcement Administration rules.

Choosing a dictation service

Whether you need legal, medical, or general business transcription, the three most important factors to evaluate when choosing a dictation service are turnaround time, accuracy, and security.

Turnaround time
The standard dictation service offers 24 to 48 hour turnaround. Many also offer STAT service, which provides 1, 2, or 4 hour turnaround.

• How does time of day impact the delivery schedule? If you submit your dictation at 8 pm for STAT transcription, will it get the immediate attention you need? Or will it be queued up until the following morning?
• How do they backup their guarantee? If they return transcriptions late, do they give you a discount? Or not charge you for them?
• Do different types of notes have different times?

Accuracy
Inaccurate transcriptions are worse than no transcriptions at all: serious mistakes can endanger patients’ well-being or jeopardize legal agreements. The dictation service you choose should employ transcriptionists with significant experience in your field, as well as quality assurance (QA) staffers to double check transcripts before they’re released.

Security
For web-based communication, the industry standard for security is 128-bit SSL security. If the dictation service uses another method of communication, ask what steps they take to make sure it’s secure. Sending unencrypted files over regular email is not a secure method of transferring your audio files or the resulting transcription.

Physical security is important as well. Ask each dictation service you speak with what measures they take to ensure the security of your data at their locations: careful employee screening and tracking is essential.

Affordable Medical Transcription Service

An increase in the demand for medical transcription has led to a corresponding increase in the number of service providers offering affordable medical transcription services. These medical transcription companies are a great help to individual physicians, outpatient clinics, group practitioners, hospitals and healthcare centers. They guarantee excellent transcription serviceswith unique, reliable and complete solutions ranging from dictation capture to document distribution and storage.

High Accuracy Rates and Minimum Turnaround

Reputable medical transcription companies keep trained and experienced transcribers providing services to a number of specialties including orthopedics, gastroenterology, radiology, cardiology and more. One of the major advantages of medical transcription companies

is that they provide digitalized documentation service converting voice recorded files into text format. Ensuring perfect accuracy in transcription services, these companies maintain in-house proofreaders, quality analysts and editors to give clients three levels of quality assurance. Besides ensuring 99% accuracy rates, the recognized medical transcription companies complete all projects within minimum turnaround time.

Ensured Confidentiality and Privacy

Medical transcription companies are perfectly optimized with advanced technological devices to meet various demands of the healthcare industry. They use convenient dictation methods for a total medical transcription solution. Most of the companies offer web-based transcription service providing various advantages to the clients. In addition to this, medical transcription companies provide toll free numbers making it easy for physicians to convey dictations using telephones.

When planning to outsource your medical transcription jobs, it is important to verify whether the affordable medical transcription service is HIPAA compliant. HIPAA compliant companies guarantee high confidentiality and privacy in their services following various rules and regulations of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act.

Popular medical transcription companies provide affordable and secure medical transcription service using the latest document flow management software and advanced digital systems. Depending on the requirements of the clients they provide short term and long term services.

How to Save Money Through Medical Transcription Outsourcing

Health care has always been a stable industry and due to this, the need for medical records keeps on increasing. Hospitals would often tend to save money through medical transcription outsourcing to handle their records. Precise and accurate details in medical records are important because this will serve as the basis for the diagnosis and plan of care. Medical records will also serve as an evidence for instances of malpractice and negligence. Because of the increasing trends in medical recording keeping, well known hospitals are in great need of people who will process the medical records. This increasing trend has given birth to the medical transcription outsourcing business. For people who would like to start a business and save some extra profit, here are some ways on how save money through medical transcription outsourcing.

• Step1

Business owners can save money through medical transcription outsourcing because of the increased demands in this industry. Big hospitals are providing a lot of workload due to the increasing number of patients. Therefore, medical transcription outsourcing firms will be filled with jobs and workloads bringing a lot of income.

• Step2

Investment in a medical transcription outsourcing firm is not costly because only few materials are needed. Basic office equipments are the only things needed and no other special necessary equipment unlike if you start other businesses that have complicated equipments.

• Step3

For hospitals, a medical transcription outsourcing is really a cost effective way to have quality medical records with inexpensive labor fees. A lot of countries nowadays are into the business of medical transcription outsourcing. The quality provided is very good yet labor fees are also reasonable.

• Step4

A lot of companies have started to establish medical outsourcing firms leading to a tight competition among these companies. For hospitals this is very beneficial because the greater the competition within a business, the lower the prices and expenses there will be.

Americans’ personal records increasingly digitized and routed through Asia

MANILA – It started out as a Thanksgiving Day stomachache, a nagging pain that sharpened until it reverberated from California halfway around the world.

When the ache in her lower abdomen became excruciating, the young woman was rushed to a surgery center, where the doctor diagnosed a ruptured appendix.

The woman needed an operation—fast. But before the surgeon could wheel her into the operating theater, he had to find out whether the patient’s insurance company would pay. That meant paperwork: A report had to be dictated, typed up and submitted to her insurer for approval.

So while the woman waited in agony, her doctor dialed a toll-free number.

The instant he hung up a few minutes later, a digitized recording raced through fiber-optic cables on the Pacific Ocean seabed and into a computer server on the 17th floor of a Manila office tower, where medical school graduate Dinah Barrete was working the graveyard shift.

Headphones plugged in, she tapped a pedal to start the doctor’s voice file and began typing. Her transcription of his report was on its way to him via the Internet in 15 minutes, as quickly as if the work had been done just down the hall, but much less expensive.

In a startling illustration of the life-or-death decisions involving low-paid workers thousands of miles away, Americans’ most personal details move 24 hours a day as U.S. health-care providers outsource billions of lines of transcription work each year to Asia in a bid to cut the cost of medical bureaucracy.

From dictated summaries of checkups to complete recordings of surgeons’ conversations in operating theaters, foreign workers are transforming the digital audio files into the documents that tell Americans’ medical histories.

Most of the work is done for 10 to 15 cents a line in less than 24 hours. Audio files dispatched across the Internet are transcribed and the text is fired back to the U.S. to meet government demands for a shift to electronic medical records.

Before broadband connections made it easy to outsource office work, Americans typed out medical records.

Now thousands of low-paid workers in countries such as India, the Philippines and Pakistan work in offices that never close. Tapping feverishly at keyboards, Asian transcriptionists often strain to understand what American doctors have dictated through phone lines or into digital recorders.

Other typists work under similar pressure to transfer decades-old medical documents into computer files.

Outsourcing isn’t expected to harm job prospects for American transcriptionists because there is so much work to be done, said a report by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. About 101,000 Americans were employed as medical transcriptionists in 2002, according to the bureau.

Key Benefits Of Medical Transcription Services

Medical transcription services are a valuable component of data management for any healthcare organization and present several benefits of companies of all sizes. Instead of investing the time and money to train employees of an organization for dictation capture and reporting, medical transcription services can manage all of these operations – and more. Medical transcription companies are a valuable outsourced resource for the healthcare industry, and there are several benefits for sending dictation projects to another party. Here are the key benefits of medical transcription services:

1. HIPAA-compliant services. Medical transcription services are designed to be fully-HIPAA compliant and all data is secure. Secure data transmission is increasingly important today as files are transferred across the web and downloaded onto various interfaces. Medical transcription services can ensure all relevant data is encrypted and secured according to industry standards.
2. Easy access to data any time of day. When your physicians need to access and retrieve specific pieces of data, medical transcription services make it easy to obtain the data from a phone or other digital device 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Files and information is stored in a secure central area where all members of your healthcare organization can have access to.
3. Confidential information. Transcribed materials are stored in a highly secure server and database, and steps are taken to ensure all documents remain confidential. This is also in compliance with HIPAA laws and regional rules and regulations that require patient information to be kept confidential at all times.
4. Access to customer service. If you’re experiencing technical difficulties in retrieving your information or have questions about any of the services from the company, medical transcription services available to you may include access to a toll-free phone number for customer support. Having the ability to interact with a customer service department takes away the stress of worrying about data transmission and transfer problems.
5. Fast turnaround times. Most medical transcription services can be performed within 24-48 hours, which means you’ll have the projects completed within a reasonable time frame. When you need a dictation for a specific patient or client, it’s easy to contact the service provider for a faster turnaround if needed.
6. Lowered costs overall. Outsourcing medical transcription services can cut costs dramatically for your healthcare organization so you can invest your resources in other departments and critical areas. Instead of spending the time to train and educate staff members about the process, you can count on a reliable company to manage all of the important elements of transcription.
7. Improved workflow. Medical transcription services can be synced with your e-mail addresses and other contact management tools for improved workflow. This means you can expect to receive documents and data at a faster rate than conventional methods such as mail and package deliveries.
8. High quality work. High quality documents and reports are essential for your organization, and medical transcription services from a reliable company will ensure the highest quality standards. Most companies employ an extensive quality control system to make sure every item is produced and distributed with accuracy.

Medical Transcription Service for Hospitals and Clinics

Cost-effective medical transcription services for hospitals and clinics are offered by reputable medical transcription companies.

At present, medical transcription services are in high demand in a variety of healthcare settings in the United States. Exclusive medical transcription services for hospitals and clinics are provided by recognized and experienced companies in the field.

Excellent Medical Transcription Service

Most medical transcription companies offer HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) compliant medical transcription service in a highly professional and affordable manner. Medical transcription involves the process of transcribing the dictations made by physicians and other healthcare professionals into medical reports. These records could be clinic notes, office notes, diagnostic procedure notes, discharge summaries, operative or consultation notes and SOAP notes.

Well-trained Transcriptionists to Handle the Demands

Medical transcription firms comprise a team of skilled and experienced medical transcriptionists, proofreaders and quality analysts to handle the transcription needs of hospitals and clinics. They utilize the best combination of tools and techniques including dictation equipments, dedicated servers and high-end computers with uninterrupted high speed internet. Well-trained medical transcribers in these firms offer medical transcription service in various specialties including orthopedics, cardiology, pediatrics, gastroenterology, internal medicine, radiology, chiropractic and podiatry.

Benefits Ensured by Service Providers

Service providers process records and maintain high accuracy levels up to 99%. Other service features include:

HL7 transcription interface
3 levels of quality assurance
Commitment to accuracy
Transferring of files: FTP and browser based 256 bit AES encryption protocol
Customized turnaround times
Convenient dictation methods: toll free number and digital dictation

Medical transcription service helps healthcare providers to improve overall efficiency and reduces the workload of staffs.

Find a Trustworthy Company

If you need medical transcription service, get in touch with a provider, who offers high quality service at the industry’s most competitive price structure. Before choosing the right provider, do a comparative study of various service providers and the price structures offered.