One of the biggest concerns with operating in an industry that requires transcription work is overflow. Transcription overflow happens when the number of transcriptionists is insufficient to handle the volume of incoming work.
In this article, you’ll learn how transcription overflow is a common problem for businesses that require medical transcription services and how:
- Overflow transcription can overwhelm in-house teams, leading to delays, burnout, and inefficiencies—especially in medical and legal fields with urgent documentation needs.
- Outsourcing transcription services saves up to 60% in costs while providing fast, accurate, and scalable support—without the hassle of hiring, training, or overstaffing.
- Ditto Transcripts offers reliable overflow solutions with U.S.-based professionals, HIPAA compliance, 99% accuracy guarantees, and fast turnaround—even for STAT files.
Scaling And Overflow Transcription Services
Every medical facility has faced the problem of having an overwhelming number of patients rush in all at once. These patients must undergo necessary documentation processes, which can keep doctors, nurses, and admin staff busy with paperwork.
This is similar to lawyers. Sometimes, clients are manageable, but there are also instances where cases become overwhelming, and that is where the significance of legal transcription comes in, significantly reducing the paperwork that needs to be processed.
As a result, transcription work may come as a trickle or as a steady stream. Sometimes, however, it comes in torrents. The good news is that you don’t need to burn through your in-house transcription team to meet deadlines.
Overflow often happens when a medical facility’s transcription needs exceed the capacity of the transcription staff (though it is not limited to healthcare, as legal institutions also experience this). This creates a transcription backlog that may require overtime hours to complete, which can negatively affect your already overworked healthcare professionals.
Additionally, transcription work may be important to healthcare, but it is strictly not a core process. This is why some hospitals can assign documentation or transcription work to nurses or other staff members. They, of course, may be unfamiliar with the process, which increases the time it takes to complete the work.
In some cases, this practice is acceptable, but not always. Nurses and staff members have specific duties that they need to attend to.
When the volume of patients increases, the paperwork is often finished at a later time, but what if it is urgently needed as well? Similarly, in the legal field, trial transcription services are sought to have quicker and accurate access to transcripts, rather than waiting days before the official transcript is released. It helps lawyers prepare early for another legal proceeding—an idea that hospitals can adapt.
The Problems With the Predicament
One of the other problems with this type of predicament is that there is no real way of predicting when it will happen. A hospital may have a fully staffed medical transcription team on standby at all hours, and yet it may still not be enough to cover transcription requirements.
On the other hand, having too many long-term transcribers on payroll can be costly in terms of money and resources that are better allocated to more pressing matters.
The other option is to bring in part-time or full-time transcriptionists as needs increase. However, the process of finding and hiring talent also entails additional costs, which can escalate to unmanageable levels without careful monitoring. Overall, in-house transcription is inflexible and may require significant resources to adapt to requirements.
So, what’s the solution to this dilemma? Outsourced medical transcription services, of course!
Unlike in-house transcription with too few or too many staff, transcription service providers take as little or as much work as their clients desire. You don’t need to worry about employment or commit to hiring and assigning work to transcribers.
Providers like Ditto Transcripts can lend a helping hand to keep operations running smoothly without significantly increasing your expenses. Our transcription process is precise and timely – just like having an in-house team. Aside from that, we offer, not impose, verbatim transcriptions that capture word-for-word, including the fillers such as “ahs” and “uhms”, if those are what you are looking for.
The Overflow Solution: The Benefits Of Medical Transcription Service
For those used to medical terminology, the transcription process is often simple. Take an audio or video file, like physician dictations, and convert it to written text. Despite its simplicity, the process offers numerous advantages. Let’s focus on the benefits of enlisting overflow transcription services.
Time Savings
Doctors spend an inordinate amount of time manually recording patient histories, consultation notes, lab data, and various records by hand. Administrative staff also spend hours organizing details, assigning codes, filling forms, and handling other record-keeping tasks. This takes away from patient-facing activities.
Skilled transcriptionists specializing in the medical field can take over that work and ensure accuracy and quality in all completed transcripts and documents. They’re also more familiar with different systems from different clients.
Medical transcriptionists can utilize templates and designated formats or implement the client’s instructions with little issue. All of this helps streamline the hospital’s procedures and saves a significant amount of documentation time by creating digitally searchable files that can be easily integrated into any electronic health records (EHR) or electronic medical records (EMR) system.
Cost-Efficiency
Hiring in-house medical transcriptionists can become very expensive. Hiring costs, salaries and benefits, equipment and office space, and sundry expenses can cost as much as $100,000 per year per transcriptionist— and that’s money better spent elsewhere, like investing in new medical equipment or additional services for advanced patient healthcare.
Outsourcing your overflow transcription to a reliable medical transcription provider lets you reduce those costs by as much as 60%.
However, be cautious when selecting a transcription company, as not all of them can produce accurate transcripts. Take the case of Thomas Hospital, which sought transcription services from a company in India. At first, there may seem to be no issue until the company transcribes discharge notes requesting 80 units of insulin instead of 8 units, leading to a patient’s death. This cost the company $140 million as a settlement and resulted in permanent reputation damage. It also highlights why choosing the right medico-legal transcription service provider is a critical step.
Swift Turnaround Time
Transcription can be a time-consuming and arduous process. Poor audio recording quality and customization requirements also add to the time it takes to produce transcripts in-house.
Before you know it, the hospital is buried in paperwork again, while doctors stay longer than necessary, staff are forced into overtime, and patients experience excruciatingly long wait times. Transcription services, like Ditto Transcripts, offer fast turnaround times – as fast as 4 hours for STAT files.
Efficiency
Transcription services can significantly enhance the efficiency of running a private practice. Instead of digging through piles of handwritten notes to piece together a patient’s story, their full history is neatly organized in one digital profile.
Test results, treatments, and follow-ups are also available. Our overflow transcription team can extract key details from diagnosis notes, consult letters, and tagging info for a more straightforward overview of overall patient health.
Our transcripts also result in digitally searchable audio recordings, making it easy to find and connect the dots across patient data. Less time wasted on paperwork means more time for patients. Doctors can instantly access accurate records to make better care decisions.
In hindsight:
| Benefit | Key Point |
| Time Savings | Frees doctors/staff from paperwork; searchable digital files. |
| Cost-Efficiency | Outsourcing cuts transcription costs by ~60%. |
| Risk Management | Accurate providers prevent dangerous errors & lawsuits. |
| Fast Turnaround | STAT files done in as little as 4 hours. |
| Efficiency | Organized, searchable records improve patient care. |
Choose Ditto For Comprehensive Outsourced Transcription Overflow Services
There’s no need to waste more time looking for an overflow transcription partner when you already have the nation’s leading transcription service provider right here. Ditto Transcripts ensures accuracy and excellence in all our projects.
Here’s why we’re at the top of the industry.
- Every member of our medical transcriptionist team is an expert in the field. We employ medical transcribers 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 interface so that patient records can be updated with a click 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. Our company offers 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. 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 typically done within 72 hours; however, faster options are available.
- We have a proven track record. Consistency and transparency are our core foundations. We’ll be happy to provide client testimonials.
- We offer competitive legal transcription pricing. You don’t need to pay an arm and a leg for our services. Our prices start at a standard rate of $1.75 per minute of audio.
- We offer expanded services. Do you need your latest transcripts customized? Are e-signatures, timestamps, and speaker labels required? Or do you need Spanish, German, French, Italian, or Arabic translation? We have you covered.
- We offer unlimited customer support. Do you have a question about our service? 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. We also won’t require minimum work or upfront fees. 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 protect all your information, from file transfer to storage, to ensure patient confidentiality.
Ditto Transcripts is a Denver, Colorado-based FINRA, HIPAA, and CJIS-compliant transcription services company that provides fast, accurate, and affordable transcripts for individuals and companies of all sizes. Call (720) 287-3710 today for a free quote.