How To Choose The Right Medical Transcription Provider

Medical transcription is a specialized service that handles recordings done by doctors, nurses, patient care experts, and other healthcare industry members. It’s an effective way to cut down on administrative tasks, which is an ongoing problem in the medical industry. So, how do you choose the best medical transcription service? 

As usual, the answer is simple on the surface but complex when broken down. The most common considerations for choosing a medical transcription company are accuracy, speed, affordability, expertise, experience, and security. 

In this article, you’ll learn how:

• Accuracy is the most important factor when choosing a medical transcription service. A single error in a medical transcript can have serious consequences for a patient’s health. Ditto Transcripts guarantees 99% accuracy for all of their medical transcription projects.
• Speed is also essential, especially in the fast-paced world of healthcare. Ditto Transcripts offers a variety of turnaround times to meet the needs of different clients. We provide medical transcripts in as little as 4 hours.
• Data security is essential for any medical transcription service. Ditto Transcripts is HIPAA-compliant and takes all necessary steps to protect patient information.

What Is Medical Transcription?

Doctors can spend over 15 hours a week doing paperwork and other administrative tasks. Medical transcription, the act of converting recordings and dictations into written documents, can significantly reduce time spent on documentation. Aside from that, healthcare professionals stand to gain a lot from working with the best medical transcription service provider they can find. 

The right transcription company will provide you with the best service in all aspects without being overly cost-restrictive. Choosing the wrong provider can lead to miscommunication, medical errors, data security violations, loss of trust, reputation damage, and waste of time and resources for the hospital or medical practice. 

Transcription can help you focus and respond to your patients’ needs faster and more efficiently if you’re a doctor or a nurse. Thanks to digital archiving and searchability, medical personnel can access information faster, cutting down on the time it takes to facilitate patient healthcare. 

Medical transcribing covers several different files and report types, including: 

The right medical transcription service provider can be an effective partner by delivering accurate, fast, and high-quality transcription. This can free up your time and allow you to respond to your patients’ needs faster. 

Factors To Consider When Choosing Medical Transcription Services

Quality medical transcription can be hard to find, as many transcription companies offer service levels that might not be the best for your practice. There are several factors to consider when choosing your medical transcription partner. Here are the most important ones:

Accuracy

Medical transcription often deals with sensitive and minute details within dictations that can negatively affect a patient’s health if transcribed incorrectly. Mishearing dosage, omitting important words, and misidentifying patients in transcripts have happened before. 

This is why accuracy is essential in medical transcription. An incorrect word or number can create a new meaning to a sentence or order or undermine what the doctor or nurse is saying. 

Any error, no matter how small, exposes the medical institution to several problems, including compromised workflow, misdiagnosis, mistreatment, compromised patient care, medical negligence accusations, threats of legal action, financial implications, and regulatory issues.

Most transcription services have a standard accuracy rate guarantee for medical transcription. This can range from anywhere between 85% to 95%. Companies with experienced professional medical transcriptionists and excellent quality control processes, like Ditto Transcripts, offer accuracy above 99%. 

Speed

Medical care requires a delicate balance between speed and accuracy. Doctors must promptly develop the best, most appropriate course of action for patients. Otherwise, they’re wasting valuable time and risking the patient’s well-being.  

Similarly, transcription work involves balancing accuracy with speed because, let’s face it, anybody can make a 100% accurate transcript if they don’t have a deadline. Transcription companies like Ditto typically offer a range of turnaround times.

The most common turnaround time for medical transcription is 24 hours; we can get the job done in as little as 2 hours if needed.

This allows us to be flexible with results and pricing, allowing clients to customize their transcription turnaround times according to their budgets. 

Expertise

Excellent medical transcription companies need to keep up with the latest developments in the healthcare field. Their transcriptionists must be able to research new terms and techniques and utilize their working knowledge in the medical field to contextualize recordings correctly. They must also have access to the latest medical transcription tools and services to make them effective at their jobs. 

Experience

Knowing how much experience a transcription company has within the industry is essential. Professional medical transcription companies with years of experience offer a more polished service since they’ve had time to perfect their process. 

That means they’ve successfully adapted to the changing technology and customer needs while innovating on current technology to stay relevant and active. Furthermore, how long a company has been in operation is often a sign of reliability and stability. 

Ditto Transcripts has more than 15 years of providing excellent medical transcription services. Our experience in the field allows us to provide accurate and quality services with fast turnaround times and low costs. 

Security

Data security is an ever-present issue in outsourcing and is one of the most important things to consider when choosing a medical transcription service. 

Specifically, a law covers patient confidentiality and data protection: The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996, better known as HIPAA. This requires every company operating within the healthcare industry—hospitals, insurance providers, clinics, laboratories, and transcription companies—to provide rigorous security measures to protect medical data from leakage or breaches. 

HIPAA compliance assures clients that they are selecting a medical transcription service that can safeguard their patient information.

HIPAA requirements include: 

• Detailed Reporting and Tracking Features
• Individually Defined User Access Levels
• Individual User Names, Passwords, and PINs (immediate deactivation upon request)
• Scaled Network Redundancy
• Virtual Private Network (VPN) Integration
• Dedicated Data Centers
• Encrypting All Data With SSL 256-bit Encryption
• Employee Background Checks and NDAs

Make An Informed Decision. Choose Ditto Transcripts.

Selecting the right medical transcription agency is essential to effective patient care. However, finding someone who can meet your medical transcription needs can take time and effort. Luckily, you’re already looking at one of the best medical transcription providers in the market. Here’s why Ditto Transcripts is leagues ahead of the competition. 

• Every member of our medical transcriptionist team is an expert in the field.. Our medical transcribers are skilled in handling electronic health records (EHR) and electronic medical records (EMR), which can streamline your transcription process. We can create custom programs to push our work into your EHR/EMR data fields so that patient records can be updated with a press of a button.
• We don’t use speech recognition software to transcribe medical records. AI, machine learning, and automated speech recognition might always have the “easy-to-use” tagline, but they’re inaccurate regarding transcription. These platforms and programs always stumble on medical terminology, making them liabilities rather than assets. They’re also prone to inconsistency and susceptibility to errors caused by audio issues and multiple speakers. We offer 100% U.S.-based human transcription services for all medical transcription projects. 
• Our transcription services are >99% accurate every time, guaranteed. Medical jargon is not an issue with experienced medical transcribers, who combine excellent listening skills and years in the business to generate the most accurate transcripts. Our transcription service guarantees more than 99% accuracy for every project. In fact, we offer editing and correction services for speech-to-text results from transcription software, giving the final transcript the care it deserves. 
• We concentrate on results. Our services ensure rapid turnaround time and access to medical records and reports 24/7. Electronic file deliveries are done within 24 hours or less. 
• We have a proven track record. Consistency and transparency are our core foundations. We’ll be happy to provide client references upon request. 
• We offer unlimited customer support. Do you have a question about our service? Do you need your latest transcripts customized? Give us a call or send us an email, and our customer service representatives will get right on it. 
• We don’t require long-term commitments. We won’t tie you down with year-long contracts. Give us as much or as little work as you need, and we’ll take care of it with the same quality as all other projects. 
• We hold data privacy in the highest regard. We are a HIPAA-compliant medical transcription service provider—something not every provider can claim. Our data security protocols ensure full protection of all your information to ensure confidentiality.  

Ditto Transcripts is a HIPAA-compliant, Denver, Colorado-based medical transcription company that provides fast, accurate, and affordable transcription services for hospitals, clinics, facilities, and individual practices of all sizes. Call (720) 287-3710 today for a free quote, and ask about our free five-day trial.