Selecting the best medical transcription service provider for your practice will play a very vital role because it will have a substantial impact on the efficiency of your healthcare services. As the healthcare industry is growing, it has started including very advanced and latest technologies. Nowadays, healthcare providers, including the doctors, surgeons, nurses, clinical psychologists, etc have also the pressure to adopt the latest knowledge and technology to provide the best possible treatment to the patients. Apart from the treatment of patients, they also need to maintain the health records of the patients to keep up with the HIPAA – compliance standards. So, hospitals, clinical labs, and physicians require services for medical transcription in the United States to transcribe their recorded material to the HIPPA-compliant format.
The increasing demand for medical transcription services has resulted in the growing number of medical transcription companies. With so many options available there, everyone can get confused while choosing a service provider for the record-keeping process. The most important thing that a client needs from a medical transcription company is quality work. The quality of work consists of many portions like timely billing, physician satisfaction, and patient care, HIPAA Compliance, and joint commission accreditation.

Here are the following tips to follow in choosing the medical transcription for superior medical transcription services:
1) Innovative Technology:
The company should be financially stable enough to provide your facility with the latest technology that is the basic requirement of the market today. Having technical infrastructure for a company is necessary to keep pace with the demands of the customers. As more facilities move towards an Electronic Health Record (EHR) a company that can provide the integration to the EHR along with the tools for physicians and staff to navigate the system to be able to track remotely.

2) Certified Transcriptionist and specialty experience:
Sometimes you need the documents transcribed might be very different from those of other specialties, so it’s very essential to ensure the company you contract with has experience serving your specialty. It can be done by checking references and asking to see the examples of their past work for your field. If the company provides you with a list of references, they can be the probably only the favorable ones. You can also check whether the company employs certified medical transcriptionists who are well-trained and experienced.
Once you have chosen the medical transcription company to work with, you can start dictating. There are numerous ways to do this and methods might vary based on the service you have selected. Sometimes, physicians dial-in to the company’s database by phone and dictate into the system, where a transcriptionist gets the access the recording and gets to work creating the written record. Most of the times, doctors use an audio recorder and digitally upload the files to the transcription service. You can also send recorded tapes through snail mail, but it might impact the overall turnaround time. Physicians are using the software and employing transcription services more as proofreaders and editors, too.

3) Offshore and Domestic Services:
Another consideration for a medical transcription company is how much transcription it performs domestically and how much it is offshoring. Sometimes duplication results in a cheap rate, but sometimes at the price of accuracy. You should also consider your needs, if the majority of the transcribed documents are for use only, maybe going with an offshore -heavy service is for you. If the documents need to be transcribed must be perfectly accurate. Like communications with other providers and health systems, obviously, you will want the transcription to be done domestically.

4) You should pay for only What you need:
Most of the medical transcription companies pride themselves on flashy features and optional components. While some might be useful for you or your staff, it’s worth considering if someone really needs all the bells and whistles. If all you need is effective, accurate transcription, then only pay for the basic package. As always, inquire about the level of support you can expect from the medical transcription company if something goes wrong.
“Some companies can be very expensive and want to give you all the bells and whistles when you only need the basic package”, First of all, you need to get to know how much it will cost, is it a one-time price or do you pay for the software/hardware and then a monthly or yearly fee.

TIPS FROM EXPERTS:
You Should Spell Everything Correct in the Contractual Terms:
When you are negotiating with any third-party service, it’s very essential to know exactly what you can expect from them for what cost. It means taking the time to sit down and negotiating the contract that you need line by line. It can be an arduous task to make sure every last detail, even you may also use the terms of the contract to hold the organization accountable for its performance. You should always try to build quality metrics into the contract.

You Should Make Sure That The Software interfaces With Your Existing System Smoothly:
The software that we might use, either in our own or in conjunction with a medical transcription service, should be compatible with our Electronic Health Records (EHR). Today when the healthcare industry is increasing rapidly in the digital world, the ability to generate and share records across platforms – both in our office and other provider’s offices – is invaluable. Softwares those are required for the transcription process need to be able to communicate properly with all the electronics aspects of your practice.

Try To Focus On Getting As Short A Term As Possible:
Finally, you should try your best to negotiate the short contract, search for a medical transcription company that can offer a monthly subscription. Some companies try to lock in the longer term contracts, but it’s best to talk them to one year or less. If you see their medical transcription service first, and you are satisfied, then you can obviously extend the contract in the future