Medical Transcription Learning Shortcuts

What is medical transcription?

Medical Transcription comprises of transcribing and editing physician's notes, dictated from recording equipment. Skilled Medical Transcriptionists assist physicians to accurately transcribe comprehensive patient medical histories, diagnoses, and treatments. These reports in essence, represent the doctors to their colleagues. These reports also identify the doctors for work ethics and seriousness towards their job. A doctor is considered to be an expert in his field, if the reports are accurate, with good structure and flow, well formatted and with excellent presentation. More referrals are sent to him, resulting in more business. It is therefore imperative that the quality of the report is held very high.

What separates medical transcription from simple dictation or keyboarding?

The primary skills necessary for the creation of quality medical transcriptions are an extensive medical knowledge and understanding, sound judgment, deductive reasoning, and the ability to detect medical inconsistencies in dictation. For example, a diagnosis inconsistent with the patient's history and symptoms may be mistakenly dictated. The medical transcriptionist questions, seeks clarification, verifies the information, and enters the correct information into the report. Medical understanding is critical for the professional medical transcriptionist. The complex terms used in medicine are unlike the language used in any other profession.

Why is medical transcription important?

All health care providers rely to some extent on the skills of the medical transcriptionist to provide written documentation of health care. The reports produced by medical transcriptionists are the repository of information concerning medical practice. These reports function as legal documentation and fulfill requirements for insurance reimbursement. They also serve as reference for scientific research.

Source : http://www.articlesnatch.com/

About the Author:
For more information visit our website at Medical record Transcription services

Medical Transcription and Voice Recognition

How will voice recognition affect the future of medical transcription?

No doubt, you’ve heard different opinions and views on this subject. If you’re a medical transcriptionist you probably can’t understand how voice recognition can take over for a trained qualified medical transcriptionist. And you’re not alone.

Let’s dig a bit deeper into voice recognition and medical transcription.

As you already know, doctors are busy people. This is never more obvious then when they’re dictating their notes. It’s understandable they’re busy, and as their MT, I can surely forgive them but will the latest voice recognition software be as forgiving as me?

Not likely.

As a transcriptionist you will have typed through background noise, patients moaning, doctors eating their lunch, personal conversations (oops they forgot the recorder was on) and other incomprehensible noise. Not to mention, ESL doctors with heavy accents and very tired ER doctors after a long shift!

At this time there is no voice recognition software which can handle this type of voice recognition. It is impossible for the software to determine actual speech from mistakes in conversation, background noise, heavy accents, etc.

So what does this mean for our future?

I wouldn’t worry about voice recognition. Rumors of MTs beign out of r a job have been around long before I became an MT. Eight years later, there are still no real advances in this field.

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Medical Transcription through Outsourcing

Medical Transcription is one of the numerous activites that have benefitted from outsourced. Medical Transcription refers to the transformation to text of prerecorded physician notes. This activity has long been carried out by transcription services allied to the hospitals. Yet, with the outburst of offshoring, there has been a reposition in the service delivery model adopted for medical transcriptioning.

There has been a paradigm shift in the epicenter of medical transcription to India. With more and more companies mushrooming in India to cater outsourced Medical Transcription services to US based clients, it has spelt a windfall in savings for US based medical practices. After the initial resentment against outsourcing, it has grown to be recognised as the de facto way of doing medical transcription primarily as a means to cut costs. No wonder, outsourced transcription services are focussing on cost as their USP.

Nevertheless, the tendency has been such that medical practices are prepared to spend more for qualitative service. Also, practices have become more sensible about the data safeguard issues. Patient information handling becomes a essential mark on which medical transcription services are being judged. Also, pricing clarity, quicker turnaroundtime and appropriate pricing criteria are added factors by which a medical transcription services judged.

Speech Recognition software has still not become exact enough to be trusted with patient notes transcription. So for few years more, manual medical transcription with the backing of software and equipments will be the chosen mode of transcription. But it is necessary that medical transcription services shall embrace technology to improve efficiency of the transcription operation.

Source : http://www.amazines.com/

Tips for Medical Transcribers

MTs are often faced by words that seem so Greek sounding but in reality it just sounded Greek because the dictator is Greek, Irish, Indian, Chinese, Japanese, etc. To help you find those difficult sounding words accented by international dictators, here are some tips on how to search for the unknown and unfamiliar:

When you get to a word that you cannot hear, relisten to the word several times. A second and a third would be enough, and if you still cannot hear the word, put a blank and the voice counter so you can easily go back and check on it after you have listened to the whole file. You never know, the dictator may repeat the word you are looking for in some parts of the file and this would be a lot easier for you to reference.

You may also want to adjust the speed of the voiceplayer when you go back and relisten to it. Some words appear clearer when you reduce the speed or increase it. This will all depend on your keen attention to every sound or syllable being pronounced.

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This Simple Audio and Transcription Tip Will Save You Hundreds of Dollars Over the Next Year

Here's the scenario:

• You have your call or presentation recorded.
• You want the audio recording cleaned up.
• You also want the call transcribed.
  

Here's where the big mistake comes in...

Many people don't know which order to have things done in.

Do they have the audio edited and then transcribed, or do they have it transcribed first and then edit the audio?

Well, I'm hear to tell you the best way to handle this situation. This tip will save you literally hundreds of dollars over the next year.

1. Have the recording transcribed first.
2. Then go through (or better yet - have your assistant go through) the transcription and highlight the portions that should be deleted from the audio. Do the highlighting digitally with a software like Microsoft Word.
3. Then, send the marked up transcription to your audio editor.
   

The reason this will save you so much money is by being specific about what needs to be taken out of the recording, your audio editor will spend less time communicating with you and less time working on your project. He or she will be able to easily locate the edit points and remove the unwanted parts without having to listen to the entire audio.

"So," you might say, "that's great and all, but what if I don't have my recorded calls and presentations transcribed."

Well, that's another big mistake people often make. They spend the money to have a presentation recorded and sometimes event edited, but they don't put in the extra money for transcription.

I'm hear to tell you that transcription can pay for itself, if you follow these steps:

1. Turn your recorded teleseminars into free or paid products. Remember to require an opt-in before you give away a free gift. With the audio, include the transcripts as a pdf eBook. This will double the value of your product and allow all types of learners to consume your content.
2. Chop up your transcript into marketing materials! Some great repurposing opportunities are blog posts, articles for submissions, press releases. You can even turn them into powerpoint presentations, lay them over the video and submit them to the viral video engines.
3. Don't do it all yourself! This one is the real kicker. The beautiful thing about recordings is that they multiply your reach and the impact you have on the world with little added effort. What would the point be of taking yourself away from your high payoff activities when you could hire someone else at a fraction of what you charge to do these things even better and faster for you?
   

Author Resource:- Caleb Scoville helps consultants, trainers, coaches and service professionals, multiply their impact with information products and audio and video online marketing strategies.

Find out the 5 simple steps to turn one hour into a successful marketing plan at www.northbankaudio.com/teleclass

Source : http://www.articleriot.com/

Medical Transcription Tips For New MTs

The question I am asked most often by new medical transcriptionists is how to get their first job. Most transcription jobs require experience as the medical providers do not have time to train new transcriptionists. So, how do you get experience if you have no experience? That is the struggle for beginners.

The good news is that there are transcription companies that will hire you and train you. Hospitals and clinics usually use a transcription company to do their transcription mainly because they don't have the time or personnel to train an inexperienced MT.

If you have taken a medical transcription course you were probably told to call the hospitals and clinics in your area or write them a letter about getting a job. Also to place ads in the newspaper, read the ads in the newspaper, and to contact medical transcription companies to see if they are hiring inexperienced MTs.

I got my first MT job by answering an ad in the newspaper from a small transcription company. I was in my last weeks of school and didn't do very well on transcribing dictation at the interview, but I was hired because I did know the medical terminology very well.

All of the above can work if you persist and don't give up. I recently had a new MT email me about trying to get her first job and I told her about all of the above methods. Then I told her to be sure and go to the MT forums such as MT Desk and ask there about who was hiring beginning MTs.

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Transcription job losses an industry trend

The medical transcriptionists who will lose their Fargo MeritCare jobs this fall are victims of an industry trend, according to experts in the business.

Looking to lower costs while improving turnaround time and accuracy, health care organizations around the country are relying on other ways of recording patient information, said Claudia Tessier, vice president of MRInstitute, which educates on health-information technology.

“The movement is toward real-time documentation, which improves patient care and patient safety,” she said. “As this happens, it diminishes the need for medical transcription as we know it. It’s not going to happen overnight, but it’s a reality.”

Last month MeritCare announced that it would outsource more of its transcription work, resulting in the loss of 70 jobs. Twenty-eight of those people accepted job offers with Nuance, the outsourcing company, said Caryn Hewitt, executive partner of MeritCare’s health information management.

Fifty full-time transcriptionists will remain with MeritCare to facilitate entering information directly into patients’ electronic records, one of the health organization’s goals, Hewitt said. Prior to June, MeritCare hadn’t hired a medical transcriptionist in 18 months.

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Medical Transcription Tips for Word Searching

Word searching is locating the medical word that is correct both in spelling and meaning. This is a Medical Transcription skill that takes time and practice to develop.

Tip #1:

If you find yourself unable to locate a medical word in your reference books, it might be the word has an initial letter different than the sound or initial letter you hear. For example, the v sounds very much like that of f, the letter m may actually be an x (xiphoid) and the k might be ch (ischemic).

In addition, medical terms that contain silent letters such as euthyroid, herniorrhaphy, pneumonia or words frequently mispronounced such as menstruation present a unique challenge for the Medical Transcriptionist.

Experience is often more the teacher in using available resources. The longer you remain a Medical Transcriptionist, the more proficient you will become in determining sound-alikes and locating terms with silent letters.

Tip #2:

When you are unable to locate a phrase under a particular entry, look under a related entry.

Tip #3:

When you hear a phrase you cannot understand, look first under the noun and not the adjective. Nouns usually follow adjectives. An example: If you are looking for bullous emphysema, look under emphysema (the noun) and not bullous. To find particular diseases such as Parkinson’s disease, look under disease.

An exception to the above tip is that in Latin phrases, the noun is followed by the adjective such as “fascia lata,” and “ligamentum flavum.” You would look under the first word with Latin phrases. Bacterial names are another exception in that the genus is given first, followed by the species: Neisseria gonorrhoeae.

If you exhaust all you know to do when word searching on the job, a Medical Transcriptionist should:

1. seek another transcriptionist’s opinion
2. refer to the patient’s chart
3. contact the dictating physician for clarification
4. leave a blank in the report and attach a note so that the dictator may insert the correct word
   

If you leave a blank in the report, you should flag the report by attaching a note with a paperclip. The note should list all blanks left in the report, and giving as many details as possible for ease of identification such as page and line number. The Medical Transcriptionist may also give a phonetic spelling of what the word or words sounded like to assist the dictator in filling in the blank or blanks.

The main thing to remember about word searching is to never guess at a word. A blank in the medical report does not reflect poorly on the Medical Transcriptionist who thoroughly researched for the words and exhausted all else before leaving the blank. Leaving a blank is the correct thing to do. Integrity and accuracy of the medical report is much more important than presenting documents that never leave blanks.

Written by: Connie Limon, Medical Transcriptionist. Visit us at http://www.aboutmedicaltranscription.info for more information about the unique and rewarding career choice of Medical Transcription. Visit Camelot Articles http://www.camelotarticles.com for a variety of FREE reprint articles for your newsletter, web sites or blogs.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com

Who Employs Medical Transcriptionists?

r starters, you need to know who employs medical transcriptionists these days. Please note that many "telecommute" using DSL or other broadband internet connections so one does not have to live "near" any of these entities to work in the field.

• Doctor's offices or clinics
• Hospitals
• Transcription services
• Radiology and pathology departments
• Insurance companies
• Medical libraries
• Government
• Legal offices
• Veterinary medical facilities

Source : http://www.squidoo.com/

Transcend Ranked #1 Performing Medical Transcription Company by KLAS

ATLANTA, Jul 17, 2008 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- TRANSCEND SERVICES, INC. (TRCR: 9.39, -0.04, -0.4%) , the third largest provider of medical transcription services to the U.S. healthcare market, today announced that it has been ranked the #1 performing Medical Transcription Service Organization (MTSO) in the KLAS MTSO Study 2008.

KLAS is an independent-research company that healthcare decision makers rely on for accurate, honest and impartial information on vendor performance. KLAS conducts surveys of healthcare executives and professionals within the client base of each MTSO. The resulting 426 page report reflects the aggregated opinions of actual customers, comparing MTSO performance against participant objectives and expectations.

We are honored that our customers have ranked us number one," stated Sue McGrogan, Chief Operating Officer of Transcend. "Our primary mission is to consistently provide industry-leading customer service to our clients. I am extremely proud of our operational team and their tireless commitment to excellence for each and every customer."

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Expansion of medical transcription services

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Intivia Inc, the leading provider of medical transcription services and medical office software suite, has announced strategic expansion of its operations in Thiruvananthapuram and Vadodara in Gujarat.

Intivia plans to create opportunities for over 300 medical transcription professionals at these two locations over the next 12 months, as part of its Phase I expansion in these regions. Medical transcription operations in both cities will commence this month.

The expansion is intended to successfully meet the rapidly growing demand of healthcare documentation and technology services, said Ashish Vachhani, CEO, Intivia.

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Medical Transcription – Practice Makes Perfect

The first time I plugged in my transcriber machine and listened to my very first medical dictation, I thought “Oh, my god, what I have I gotten myself into”. You see, I had no prior experience in the health field and I just hadn’t heard anything like this before.

To make matters worst my typing speed was abysmal. In fact, I’ll let you in on a little secret during my first typing class in my medical transcription course I had the worst typing speed out of the whole class…. An embarrassingly low 19 words per minute.

But I stuck it out and by the second month into my course my typing speed was around 40 accurate words per minute and from there on things just snowballed, within 6 months I was typing 80 accurate words per minute and my speed has increased steadily since.

Those foreign dictations didn’t sound so alien anymore and I was actually understanding the medical language and anatomy.

For someone with zero background in the medical field or medical transcription, this was a huge accomplishment.

So how did I do it? With a lot of practice, practice, practice.

Every day I used the incredible Mavis Beacon Typing Software which my teacher recommended for about 10 to 20 minutes.

I wrote down all the medical terms and different meanings on flashcards. Writing them down on flashcards not only helped me memorize them but the daily practice worked wonders as well. I would take the flashcards along with me everywhere I went and when I had a spare 5 minuets, I would just glance through them. This did wonders for my memory skills.

And of course, I had lots of hands on actual medical transcription practice during my course.

If you’re thinking of taking a medical transcription course but have been held back because of fear. I assure you, you probably won’t be worst than I was at the beginning. If you stick with it and practice you will improve.

I’m not particularly proud of my very slow typing speed back then or my little medical knowledge, but I’ve shared this story with you to encourage you and assure you that you can do this too.

So, if you think you can do it don’t hold yourself back any longer and go for it. Oh, and one thing and this I am very proud of, I finished my course with a 99.8% average… the highest in my class

Grab your Free Medical Transcription Course & Special Introductory Offer at the VLC. I have the introductory medical terminology DVDs and they're a fantastic introduction into the world of medical transcription. They're also offering $100 dollars off any medical transcirption course.

Source : http://www.askthemt.com/

Professional Transcription and Your Business

Got stacks of audio tapes that need to be converted to a more user-friendly format? Professional transcription services may be the answer.

Professional transcriptionists can take standard or micro cassette tapes and produce a typed version of the text in a format that's clear, consistent and correct. They can create transcripts of taped meetings, training sessions, seminars and conventions, as well as dictated letters, reports and manuscripts. Once the information is transcribed, you can easily email, fax or post it to a Website.

Accuracy Is Essential

Transcribing actually covers a variety of services. It can include whatever editing is necessary to make a report or letter 'flow'. It can also include the tweaking sentence syntax, adjusting paragraphs, removing redundancies, and repairing general grammatical errors.

For some professions, a high degree of accuracy in transcripts is crucial. For example, medical transcriptionists must carefully listen to dictated recordings made by physicians and other healthcare professionals and accurately transcribe them into reports, correspondence and other administrative materials that eventually become part of patients' permanent files. Their ability to understand and correctly transcribe patient assessments and treatments reduces the chance of patients receiving ineffective or even harmful treatments and ultimately ensures high quality patient care.

Accuracy in transcripts is equally as important in other fields. In legal matters, it's essential because all testimony must be rendered exactly as it's spoken. Likewise, police detectives require precise transcripts of statements by suspects and witnesses. In the corporate arena, letters, meetings and training sessions must be properly transcribed for the sake of effective education and communication.

Requirements For A Good Transcriptionist

Whether you need medical, legal or general transcribing for your business, accurate transcribing requires a unique set of skills. But if your staff lacks the expertise or time to transcribe materials in house, an outside company can easily fill the void.

Working with an outside vendor offers a variety of cost-saving benefits, including:

• No cost of special equipment.
• No hourly employee downtime. You pay only for production.
• No Social Security, payroll or unemployment taxes.
• No medical insurance benefits, paid vacations and sick leave
  

But before you run out and hire the first transcription company available, make sure it has the skills to meet your needs. The outsourcer you choose should be:

• Well-versed in the English language
• Knowledgeable of the rules of grammar
• Familiar with your industry
• Easily accessible for questions
  

About The Author

For more information about professional transcription services, contact Kate Smalley, Connecticut Secretary, at 203-641-3739 or mailto:kms@connecticutsecretary.com

Connecticut Secretary
Freelance Secretarial and Transcription Services
http://www.connecticutsecretary.com
203.641.3739 mailto:kms@connecticutsecretary.com

Understanding the Profession of Medical Transcription

Understanding the Profession of Medical Transcription

Medical Transcription has existed since the beginning of medical care and research. Ancient cave writings attest to the earliest forms of healthcare documentation. While the medium changed from metal plates to clay tablets, to hieroglyphs on temple walls, to papyrus, to parchment, to paper, and most recently to electronic files, the reasons for maintaining records have always been the same-to record an individual's health care and the achievements in medical science.

Until the twentieth century, physicians served as both providers of medical care and scribes for the medical community. After 1900, when standardization of medical data became critical to research, medical stenographers replaced physicians as scribes, taking their dictation in shorthand. The advent of dictating equipment made it unnecessary for physician and scribe to work face-to-face, and the career of medical transcription began. As physicians came to rely on the judgment and reasoning of experienced medical transcriptionists to safeguard the accuracy and integrity of medical dictation, medical transcription evolved into a medical language specialty. Now, at the dawn of the twenty-first century, medical transcriptionists are using speech recognition technology to help them create even more documents in a shorter time. Medical transcription is one of the most sophisticated of the allied health professions, creating an important partnership between healthcare providers and those who document patient care.

Medical Transcriptionists as Professionals

The industry is moving toward electronic health records, allowing storage of an individual's health history so that it can be accessed by physicians and healthcare providers anywhere.

Physicians and other healthcare providers employ state-of-the-art electronic technology to dictate and transmit highly technical and confidential information for their patients. These medical professionals rely on skilled medical transcriptionists to transform spoken words into comprehensive records that accurately communicate medical information. Sometimes speech recognition systems are used as an intermediary to translate the medical professional's dictation into rough draft. The medical transcriptionist then further refines it into a finished document.
Keyboarding and transcription should not be confused. The primary skills necessary for performance of quality medical transcription are extensive medical knowledge and understanding, sound judgment, deductive reasoning, and the ability to detect medical inconsistencies in dictation. For example, a diagnosis inconsistent with the patient's history and symptoms may be mistakenly dictated. The medical transcriptionist questions, seeks clarification, verifies the information, and enters it into the report.

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Why Work at Home as a Transcriptionist?

When many people think about doing transcription at home, medical transcription is the first to come to mind. It's a great job but requires serious training beforehand. However, there are other possibilities for people who want to do transcription.

General transcription jobs often require some training, as you need to understand formatting and practice transcribing, which is far more challenging than just typing what you hear, even when you are typing verbatim.

The challenge with transcription jobs is that most companies will want experience. It's a tough job and if you want to work at home, that means you aren't directly supervised. It makes it tough for a company to trust someone who hasn't done the job before.

Working as a transcriptionist has some advantages. Many jobs have highly flexible hours, as in most cases you will be transcribing recorded. The amount of background noise you tolerate is a personal preference, although most transcriptionists prefer to keep the noise to a minimum so that their work is heard more clearly.

All transcription jobs require tremendous accuracy. To be sufficiently accurate you need to develop an ear for transcription, which quite simply takes practice. It's amazing how much better and faster you can work once you have done this.

Obviously a transcriptionist needs great typing skills. It is not uncommon to see jobs require a minimum typing speed of 80 wpm. Of course, this is a skill you can develop on your own and there are plenty of online tests you can take to show your skills.

To build your basic skills, most community colleges have classes you can take to learn basic transcription. You can also check for online courses if you think you will study well that way. The advantage to online courses is that they most resemble your hoped for working conditions, as you will lack the face to face interaction present in a classroom.

Your equipment needs are fairly minimal. You probably already have a computer. Most companies prefer high speed internet access as in many cases you will be downloading the sound files and uploading your finished product.

You will want a foot pedal to control the dictation. Some companies will provide this while others will expect you to provide your own. The best selection for these is on eBay; just make sure you buy from a reputable seller.

You will also probably enjoy noise cancelling headphones... something to make the sounds around you a little less distracting. These are generally very easy to find. You don't need top of the line headphones, but something to cut out at least some background noise can be very helpful. But any headphones that will work with your computer will do the job if you don't care about blocking background noise.

General transcription is an excellent work at home job. With pay generally being based on production, you can be limited by the availability of work but it also means you can improve your pay by improving the speed of your work. This can be highly enjoyable yet sometimes frustrating work.

About Author :

Stephanie Foster blogs at http://www.homewiththekids.com/blog/ about life working at home. Visit her site to learn more about general transcription work at home jobs.

Medical Transcription: The Rising Star of BPO

When most people hear business process outsourcing, the first thing that comes into their minds is the call center industry. Due to our excellent English skills, many companies choose the Philippines as the center of their help desk and technical support operations. However, while this is the most visible side of business process outsourcing, our cheaper cost of labor and language abilities also mean that other functions are now increasingly being transferred here.

There are many misconceptions about medical transcription, many thinking it is just like call center work, or viewing transcription as a service required only by doctors with bad handwriting. But, to follow a cliche with another, there’s more to medical transcription than just that.

An Integral Function of Medicine
Medical transcription is actually a function that has been performed since ancient times as a means of preserving knowledge. After studying their patients and their particular ailments, ancient physicians would record their observations on papyrus for future reference. It has been integral to the growth of medical science from early times. While times may have changed, and knowledge is now stored as data in huge mainframes and complex server systems instead of paper, the function of medical transcription remains the same. To this day, when studying a patient, doctors still make observations, but instead of writing these down on paper, now commonly use voice recorders to keep track of their observations.

New Trends in Transcription
While these recordings contain the information, it is difficult to analyze or share this raw data without converting it into a more accessible medium. This is where medical transcription comes into play. The Audio recording are converted into text format by a medical transcriber. The term can either refer to a person performing this function or to voice-recognition devices that can interpret and encode the data.

Despite the recent advances in technology that allow voice recognition software to encode spoken word into textual data, many still prefer the services of human encoders. This is due to the high cost of voice recognition systems, as it is a relatively new technology, and many systems have not been developed to the point where they can cost-effectively replace people. Automatic Recognition Software still has some years to go before it can match human recognition. This means that there are still opportunities for those who wish to pursue a career in medical transcription

The Work
The benefits of being a medical transcriber are high pay, and relatively acceptable working hours. Since transcription only requires the voice recording, there is less need for graveyard shifts, unlike call center employees who have to match the work schedules of their offshore clients. The work also provides good working experience to those who are in the medical profession, as it serves as a means for them to learn more about their field even while working. Indeed, a major requirement for medical transcribers is basic medical knowledge.

Due to our high number of nursing and medical students, this should not be a problem save for the fact that many of them already opt to work abroad. A DTI article written in August 2005 stated that every year, an average of 30,000 medical professionals complete their studies in the country. Our doctors, nurses and healthcare providers have achieved worldwide recognition for their accuracy, effectiveness and integrity. According to the same article, around 25,000 from the total 380,000 college graduates are qualified to do BPO work (DTI, http://sites.k2ia.com/dti/DTI_News.php?contentID=60).

In a TESDA article, MTC Academy President Eugenio G. Gonzales said that at present the country cannot as yet satisfy the high demand for transcribers due to the lack of awareness among job seekers about employment opportunities in the medical transcription industry. However, Mr. Gonzales remains confident that the growth in the industry comparable to that of contact centers will materialize like in the next three years given the immediate and proper positioning and readiness of the Philippines in the global market. (TESDA, October 2004, http://www.tesda.gov.ph/services1/lmi_oct2004.asp). MTC Academy is the country’s first and largest TESDA accredited medical transcription training program.

Career Advancement
As in call centers, there is room for advancement in Medical Transcription, especially if one is already aiming for a career in health care. Besides promotion to management or to human resources and development for training, the work also provides good experience in the health care field, and can provide an excellent stepping stone to further work in the medical field. Should one continue his or her studies in medicine or nursing, the past experience with transcription offers insights into the profession that normally may take years to reach.

Future Developments
Due to the advancement of voice recognition programs, medical transcription as a career is not going to be around forever. While it is some time before the technology becomes adequate to eliminate the need for people to do the work, large players in the IT industry such as IBM, Philips and Microsoft have been investing heavily in voice recognition research. Bill Gates has predicted that the technology will be present by 2011, and IBM is even targeting 2010 as the rollout date for their voice recognition systems.

As new technology develops, the industry will have to become more and more competitive just to survive. Lower salaries may become standard as more companies will be switching to the newer technologies. But until that point, the market is still set to grow for outsourced medical transcription. So if you are interested in a career in health care and are looking for an entry level job that provides more immediate financial benefits, there is no time to waste! Now is the time to make use of this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

For a listing of the different job Opening for medical transcribers, log on to www.jobstreet.com, click on “search jobs” and type medical transcription in the search field.

Medical Transcription Tutor Online

If you want to succeed in a medical transcription career, you can now enhance your skills with the Medical Transcription Tutor Online (MTTO), an affordable prepaid tool for current and would-be Medical Transcription (MT) students and practitioners.

The first and only prepaid medical transcription learning tool, MTTO is offered to all MTs and medical transcription professionals from any training center seeking additional practice time. This prepaid program offers valuable exposure to various dictations with different specialty and difficulty levels. You may also explore different level selections such as beginner, entry-level, intermediate and advanced, and see the description of materials used for the tutorial. MTTO provides access to lectures, voice files, and answer keys that are useful for assessing your transcribing accuracy. View your proficiency level by clicking on the “Report Cards” icon.

MTTO’s other features include re-loadable wallet, web-based access, four (4) levels of difficulty, automatic calculation of student’s productivity (number of lines per day), self-pace and self-assessment of quality. It is powered by Total Transcription Solutions, Incorporated (TTSI), a Philippine offshore facility that provides high-quality medical transcription services to the US health care market.

TTSI is affiliated with the American Association of Medical Transcription (AAMT), Medical Transcription Industry Association (MTIA), Medical Transcription Association of the Philippines, Inc. (MTIAPI) and TESDA, and technically supported by its partners – Integrated Document Solutions (IDS) and Cybersoft Data Networks, Inc. For more details about TTSI and its other learning tools, visit www.totaltranscription.com or e-mail info@totaltranscription.com.

source: www.mb.com.ph

How To Use Speech Recognition in Windows XP

SUMMARY
This article describes how to use speech recognition in Windows XP. If you installed speech recognition with Microsoft Office XP, or if you purchased a new computer that has Office XP installed, you can use speech recognition in all Office programs as well as other programs for which it is enabled, such as Microsoft Internet Explorer.

Speech recognition enables the operating system to convert spoken words to written text. An internal driver, called an speech recognition engine, recognizes words and converts them to text. The speech recognition engine may be installed with the operating system or at a later time with other software. During the installation process, speech-enabled packages such as word processors and web browsers, may install their own engines or they may use existing engines. Additional engines are also available through third-party manufacturers. These engines often use a certain jargon or vocabulary; for example, they may use a vocabulary that specializes in medical or legal terminology. They can also use different voices allowing for regional accents such as British English, or use a different language altogether such as German, French, or Russian.

You need a microphone or some other sound input device to receive the sound. In general, the microphone should be a high quality device with noise filters built in. The speech recognition rate is directly related to the quality of the input. The recognition rate is significantly lower or may be unacceptable if you use a poor microphone. The Microsoft Speech Recognition Training Wizard (Voice Training Wizard) guides you through the process, recommends the best position to place the microphone, and allows you to test it for optimal results.

After you have installed the system and it is working, you must train the engine for your environment and speaking style. To do so, click the Speech Recognition tab, click Train Profile, and then follow the instructions in the Voice Training Wizard to train the system to recognize background noises such as a fan, air conditioning, or other office sounds. The engine adapts to your speaking style including accents, pronunciations and even idiomatic phrases.

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Transcription Tips and Guidelines

Tips

Remember where the image controls are

The control buttons for zooming in and out and panning are located just above the image. Unfortunately, when the scrollbars are used to scroll down the image the controls are scrolled out of sight. Remember that when you get to the bottom of the image, and want to view additional lines, that you need to scroll back to the top to use the controls. NOTE! the Archives have changed the placement of the image controls to be centered above the image; on low resolution screens you may have to scroll to the right to bring them into view.

Use the tab key!

The tab key can be used to move from input field to input field. The first time you press tab it moves to the first input field, scrolling the window if necessary. This makes it easy to get to the form on a web page without having to use the scrollbar. It also is a much quicker way to move from field to field than having to use the mouse. When the page is first brought up, or if you have clicked in the top part of the window, you need to click in the lower part of the window before using the tab key.

Type the first letter of the value you want in a drop-down selection box

If you use the tab key to select an input field with a drop-down selection box you can select the value you want by simply typing the first letter of the value. If there are multiple values starting with the same letter, press that letter multiple times, the value will cycle through the possible values. For example, in the relation to head of household field, pressing 's' once will select "Son", pressing 's' a second time will select "Sister", and pressing it a third time will select "Servant". If you continue to press a letter it will cycle through the values over and over. Using the tab key and typing the first letter of your choice will generally be much faster than using the mouse to move between fields and select values in drop-down boxes.

A magnifying glass or virtual magnifying glass is sometimes quicker than zooming in on the image
If you just want to take a closer look at a word or name you may find it is quicker to use a magnifying glass or a program like Virtual Magnifying Glass than to reload the image at a higher magnification. On Windows XP there is a built-in magnifier intended for people with visual impairments that can be useful: start / Programs / Accessories / Accessibility / Magnifier

Entering a non-date value in the date of birth column
If the enumerator wrote something like "didn't know" in the month and date of birth column you can enter it by selecting "Other" in the month selection box and then entering the text in the day input box. If the enumerator entered a valid month but then something invalid for the day, e.g. May ? still select "Other" for the month and enter both the month and whatever else in the date column.

Deleting a duplicate line
If you have a duplicate line on a full page edit that line and set the line number to 99. Records with line set to 99 will be automatically deleted periodically. If you have a duplicate line on a page that is not yet complete you can also edit the line and change all the values to data from an as yet untranscribed line. To edit a line use the transcription page and click on the edit link next to the line in the table under the input form. Note: once a page is claimed the edit link will only appear when you are signed on/authenticated as the user that claimed the page.

1911: in the 1911 census you can delete an unwanted line by clicking on the Show Data link below the input form and then clicking on delete next to the line you want to delete.

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Automation Of Medical Transcription Is Driving Growth In Speech Recognition

A new report by independent market analyst Datamonitor discusses speech recognition and its use in the medical industry for transcription and dictation. It reveals that healthcare automation is driving growth in speech technology and the leading vendors, Nuance and Philips, are providing specialized solutions. The report, "Automating and Enhancing Processes through Voice in Desktop and Back Office Environments", explains that although adoption of PC-based speech recognition is not widespread, the technology has found its niche in the healthcare market, where automation and cost savings are key drivers.

Tighte budgets and the need for accurate patient records are forcing healthcare providers to automate processes with speech recognition

Changes are taking place in the healthcare industry as issues over budgets and the accuracy of patient information arise. In order to reduce the error rate in diagnosis and ensure information is recorded efficiently, healthcare providers are adopting electronic health records (EHRs). Using speech recognition with digital dictation systems, to dictate notes directly into EHRs, means that doctors can update information faster and with lower error rates. "Patient information is gradually becoming digitized in order to address issues with delivering records and test results faster," said Aphrodite Brinsmead, analyst at Datamonitor and author of the report. "By reducing the number of illegible handwritten documents and simplifying processes, providers can eradicate errors in diagnosis."

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Characteristics of a quality medical transcription school

First and foremost, a good medical transcription school will have a comprehensive curriculum designed specifically for medical transcription training. This does not mean some off-the-shelf program that mixes and matches curriculum and study material from a hodge-podge of medical and non-medical sources. You are looking for a solid A to Z curriculum that was designed by Medical Transcriptionists specifically for medical transcriptionists. There is a big difference. You don’t want a version of anatomy that is adapted from a veterinarian course. Yes, this sounds crazy, but you would be surprised at what you will find out there!

You are looking for a medical transcription school that teaches you the medical terminology, human anatomy, physiology and disease processes, abbreviations and plurals, and a host of other foundation material — all from a medical transcriptionist’s perspective.

Second, and of no less importance, the medical transcription school that you select must have an extremely strong focus on practical application. All the text-book training in the world is insufficient without a strong practicum to go along with it. Sitting in a classroom without applying what you are studying would be like memorizing vocabulary and learning to conjugate verbs in a foreign language and then assuming you could immediately go to that country and speak fluently with the natives. It just isn’t realistic. It takes a lot of practice before you can start actually doing it well. The best medical transcription schools will not graduate you until you can demonstrate a level of practical competency. And guess what? The way many doctors dictate reports is more reminiscent of a foreign language than anything else. Slurred speech, poor grammar, rapid wording, and run on sentences only serve to exacerbate an already complex and specialized language — the language of medicine!

But in the end, the best way to select the right school is to find out where the national medical transcription employers are recruiting. You can rest assured that they are doing their homework. They will not be in the habit of hiring graduates from medical transcription schools that have not proven themselves capable of producing productive medical transcriptionists. Getting a good job with a great company is really what counts isn’t it? In the ideal world you want the employers to come to you!

Source : http://www.medicaltranscriptionschool.com/

Small medical transcription firms suffer from slow Internet

Small-time medical transcription companies in the Philippines continue to suffer from the effects of slow Internet connection caused by the Taiwan earthquake last December 28 that damaged undersea cables linking the Philippines to the rest of the world.

In a phone interview, Medical Transcription Industry Association of the Philippines, Inc (MTIAPI) President Evelyn Abat said that while larger medical transcription firms have partially recovered their much-needed Internet connection, smaller organizations, which usually have no redundant connections, are having problems submitting their reports to their clients who are mostly in the US.

Abat also said that aside from submitting their reports, transcription firms often use search engines to verify information from medical terms to the identity of the doctor and the medical institution where the report would be filed.

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Medical Transcription in India: A challenging career option!

Medical Transcription is one of the fastest growing fields in health care business in Western countries, especially in the US where the entire healthcare industry is based on insurance, and detailed medical documents are needed for processing insurance claims. Therefore, the hospitals and doctors avail medical transcription services to cater with the demands of documental records, basically outsourcing the business. In the last few years, India has shown an unprecedented success in this field of medical transcription cashing in on the outsourced business from US and other western countries.

Medical Transcription provides an exciting and challenging job option with an ever expanding knowledge based career. It is the process whereby a medical transcriptionist has to accurately and swiftly transcribe medical records dictated by doctors and their associates comprising of history and physical reports, clinical notes, office visit notes, operative reports, consultation notes, discharge summaries, official letters, psychiatric evaluations, laboratory reports, x-ray and MRI reports and pathology reports. A medical transcriptionist is a person who carries out the process of converting the voice format of medical data into text data.

The data is received in the form of digital data files and voice data files and converted into text format in the process of transcription. There are certain prerequisites to convert those voice files into text documents which basically involve transcription and editing. To ensure maximum accuracy, the editing part of the transcribed files include quality checking, visual proofreading, spelling checks, grammatical corrections, rephrasing to streamline the context, and removal of inconsistencies and illogical content so that the desired accuracy of at least 98% is met before being uploaded back to the clients.

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