3 Ways Transcription Helps Healthcare Providers Increase Their Efficiency

Medical professionals are often strapped for time and they experience immense pressure to stay on top of paperwork while simultaneously having to see and treat patients. Add late nights on call and long shifts to the equation, and one can begin to comprehend the high-stress nature of the job.

When it comes to healthcare professionals, burnout can be caused by a myriad of factors. While conducting surveys for its Annual Physician Lifestyle Report over a span of 5 years, Medscape stated that “too many bureaucratic tasks (e.g., charting, paperwork)” consistently ranked among the top three reasons for burnout amongst healthcare workers.

Technology can be a go-to solution for this persistent problem. Medical technologies such as transcription can easily help healthcare workers streamline their data and paper-based work which, in turn, will increase their efficiency and reduce burnout.

Some of the ways transcription helps healthcare providers are as follows:

1) Adding an Extra Layer of Protection to Personal Health Information

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) mandates healthcare facilities and others who have access to Protected Health Information (PHI) take serious precautions to make sure the privacy and security of patient data. Healthcare facilities must follow firm security measures or face retributions for violating the law.

While increasing efficiency and productivity of medical professionals is the main driver behind the use of transcription services, ensuring that personal data in doctor-patient exchanges is protected remains paramount.

A HIPAA-compliant transcription service comes with multi-layer security features and a data centre that is continuously monitored by around-the-clock surveillance. Their security protocols encrypt both data-at-rest and data-in-motion using advanced encryption standards and other measures. This further ensures HIPAA enabled medical transcription compliance.

HIPAA compliant medical transcription companies also keep a tight rein on who has access to sensitive data. Individuals who are granted access must pass through several levels of identity verification. These companies go through a comprehensive audit procedure. Therefore, a detailed audit trail is maintained for every action that is taken on any data or voice files by the transcriptionists. This happens at each and every stage of the speech to text process.

Healthcare facilities opting for transcription services can also ask transcriptionists to sign a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) before starting any project.

These basic steps related to data security help healthcare providers ensure that PHI is in safe hands and that the information will be a lot less susceptible to both—thefts as well as HIPAA breaches.

2) Saving Time which Leads to Increased Productivity

In allowing more time to be spent on duties of greater urgency, medical transcription helps improve productivity as well as efficiency. Doctors and nurses equipped with a recording device or, better yet—a mobile transcription app—can easily capture key information for quick conversion to highly accurate text.

A mobile transcription app makes it possible to convert every thought, wish or whim of the user into perfectly transcribed text—effectively conserving both energy and time.

Here are some of the best ways medical professionals can save time with voice-to-text transcription app on their smartphones:

• Create a daily list of tasks before getting out of bed

You’re at your freshest first thing in the morning, and it’s important to take advantage of those juices flowing in your brain! Before you even get out of bed, consider polishing up your daily to-do list and scheduling tasks for the day.

• Improve your bureaucratic tasks, one word at a time

By using your voice on the app, rather than your fingers on a computer keyboard, you can get done with all your correspondence, daily emails and other data related grunt tasks within no time.

• Record ideas and notes-to-self anywhere

Given your extremely busy schedule, transcription apps make it extremely easy to record and transcribe your thoughts, ideas and other types of notes for later, without interrupting your activity - whether you’re on the bus, inspecting a patient, or jogging on the treadmill.

Apart from the ones mentioned above, there are endless other ways in which transcription can help healthcare providers maintain optimal productivity through their busy and exhausting schedules.

3) Combining the Best of Man and Machine for Optimal Results

Voice technologies, such as Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) that are used within transcription, have had a huge impact on the field of medicine. They have completely transformed the way in which students learn, doctors practice, and patients communicate with their care providers.

Advanced versions of ASR technologies now incorporate what is known as Natural Language Processing (NLP). These capture real conversations between people and use machine intelligence to process them. Although ASR systems provide highly precise results, their accuracy is dependent on many factors, including background noise, speaker volume, the recording equipment used and more. This is exactly where the human touch comes into play.

The majority transcription providers check the ASR’s work with professional human transcribers who correct any errors to achieve greater accuracy. The result, therefore, is highly refined and precise. This greatly reduces the stress on healthcare professionals and gets desired results in comparatively lesser time.

Therefore, transcription is one technology that combines the best of both machines and humans to give healthcare organizations exactly what they need. It is a winning combination that delivers highly accurate results.

Ben Walker is CEO of Transcription Outsourcing.