Transcription Paradigm Shift
For the past 50 years, transcription has been the most efficient means of documenting a patient encounter. During this time frame, the transcription industry has grown to be a multi-billion dollar industry annually. Doctors love the convenience of dictating the encounter and the time savings they realize. Administrators frown each time they receive a transcription bill and are constantly trying to find a solution that will dramatically decrease or eliminate their transcription cost.
One popular solution to eliminate or reduce transcription costs is to implement an EMR type of system. The system allows clinicians or their staff to document the patient encounter on-line, thereby eliminating or drastically reducing the need for transcription. In a recent article titled “Transcription’s Coopetition with EMR’s” by Bob Haugen, Vice President of Sales and Marketing for Emdat, Inc., he explains the problems associated with such an approach. These problems result in loss of revenue for the health care facility.
An approach that can drastically reduce transcription expenses while at the same time, allowing clinicians to document encounters using dictation is called “Structured Templates”. This approach, similar to an EMR approach, uses templates that clinicians use while dictating. Instead of a clinician or staff person using the templates on-line as they would in an EMR system, the Structured Templates are dictation templates that allow the clinician to spend less time dictating and the transcriptionist less time transcribing. The result is a win-win.
The clinician chooses from a library of specialty specific transcription templates and makes these templates their own by editing or changing them. The template should include as much pre-defined text as possible to reduce the time of dictation. The clinicians simply dictate the blanks or dictates free text that is required to complete the template. The new part of this process is that the health care facility pays a reduced price for template lines (usually 50% of the transcribed price) and pays the full transcription fee for lines that are typed by the transcriptionist..
In the end, the transcriptionist, Transcription Company and medical facility experience a win. This can be done without negatively impacting the productivity of clinicians. In fact, in most cases, it will impact productivity in a positive manner.
