How will medical transcription be affected by a National Healthcare Record?
How medical transcription will be affected by a Nationalized Health Care Record is a common question these days.
All of the soundbites that are in the air definitely keep us thinking about the future, and we've had many discussions about this. The most likely probability is that there won't be significant change at a national level, due to all of the healthcare lobbies, etc. Under a new administration, there may major reforms in this area followed by major changes in healthcare, but I think the likely hood of that is very slim.
That said, EMR systems are still emerging, pushing medical facilities to "reduce transcription costs" by using Voice Recognition and Templating features of their systems. With that in mind, we are moving forward internally with many development efforts to stay on top of this.
First, Voice Recognition tops our list, and several of our clients are ramping up. We believe the technology partner we've gone with for Voice Recognition will exceed the claims made by other vendors, keeping us in play for facilities that want to go with this technology.
Second, Interfacing updates have long been requested and are a major focus for us this year. The ability to interface with a variety of EMRs easily will keep dictation as a feasible alternative for providers moving to EMR systems. Additionally, should a national system emerge (or even if Google or Microsoft have success with a patient-oriented approach to a medical record), interfacing is one of our strongest assets to be able to participate in that environment.
Finally, we are analyzing other EMR-like functions that can be added to our system directly, which will eliminate the need for smaller facilities to purchase an expensive EMR system. EMRs are essentially documentation of a patient visit, and the transcribe note is 80% of that record. If we can position our software to be a lite-EMR, you can offer it to your clients as a value-added service.
We are always watching what is coming and focusing our current efforts to meet those needs.
