The success of any organization is based on being able to concentrate on the core business and outsource all alternative activities which are not part of the core business. The core business of a healthcare facility is that of providing quality healthcare. All alternative activities are support functions. They play a significant role in achieving the core objective, but may not be part of the core competency of the healthcare facility.
One particular activity is medical transcription, which can be the method of documenting the patient-healthcare professional encounter. What’s the importance of patient medical records in the healthcare process?
Patient records play a significant part in the next:
- Patient treatment
- Permanent Patient records
- Referrals to other doctors
- Evidence in case there is malpractice suits
- Coding, billing and insurance claims
- Satisfaction of regulatory norms
You can note that medical transcription plays a very important role in major regions of healthcare like quality of care, diagnosis and in the receivables cycle by creating patient medical records.IT-Berater Düsseldorf
What role does Information Technology (IT) play in transcription?
With the evolution of the method of patient record creation from the manual to the virtual world, Information Technology plays a very important role at every stage of the method like:
- Collections of patient-healthcare professional encounter data.
- Transmission of data to the transcriptionists
- The transcription process
- Transmission of transcribed files to the healthcare professionals
- Archiving of files for future reference
- HIPAA and HITECH compliance
- Integration with EMR systems.
The complete process needs Information technology at every stage to make the process quicker and secure. Executing transcription in-house would require that the healthcare facility have massive investment in Information technology to enable every one of these functions. It’d involve investments in servers for uploading dictation, secure file transfer protocols to distribute work to and collect work from transcriptionists, distribution network for report distribution and powerful archiving to trace dictations, work-in-progress and finished transcripts.
The simple step of outsourcing the entire process of making patient medical records needs to a technologically savvy supplier can eliminate the total burden of investment in Information technology. These valuable resources could then be put to higher use.
Explore the Field of Health Information Technology
The healthcare industry is growing faster than ever, and growing with it is the need for trained professionals in the field of information technology. With advances in medicine and technology, digital record keeping and data basing are becoming fundamental elements to modern healthcare facilities.
Based on statistics held by the United States Bureau of Labor, job prospects for professional in the information technology field are expected to be one of the fastest growing for the next decade. Furthermore, technicians are in constant demand by employers, making IT professionals in the industry invaluable. Wages for technicians averaged at $40,610 in 2008, and those holding degrees from accredited universities earned even more.
Healthcare technicians perform a variety of duties relating to organization records handling. Their skills are crucial to efficient patient care. Many of these duties include compiling medical information like medical history, current symptoms, examination results, diagnostic tests, treatment methods, and past healthcare services provided. Workers in this field also organize and manage medical data and ensure the standard and accuracy of data.
In addition to careful management of data, technicians are responsible for understanding and using a variety of advanced equipment and technologies. Technicians are now actually proficient with electronic health records, or EHR. With this sort of software, technicians maintain and analyze each of a facilities data. Professionals often work to improve the quality of data management, and donate to greater quality in overall patient care.
Professionals in the information technology field may hold an associates degree, or higher. Programs in the field are given at a variety of field, and typically cover a broad array of topics in healthcare and computer systems. At the associate’s level, graduates can expect an introductory degree of knowledge of the next areas.