The success of any organization lies in to be able to focus on the core business and outsource all other pursuits which are not part of the core business. The core business of a healthcare facility is that of providing quality healthcare. All other pursuits are support functions. They play an important role in achieving the core objective, but may possibly not be part of the core competency of the healthcare facility.
One such activity is medical transcription, which can be the procedure of documenting the patient-healthcare professional encounter. What is the importance of patient medical records in the healthcare process?
Patient records play an important part in the following:
- Patient treatment
- Permanent Patient records
- Referrals to other doctors
- Evidence in case of malpractice suits
- Coding, billing and insurance claims
- Satisfaction of regulatory norms
You can note that medical transcription plays a critical role in major areas of healthcare like quality of care, diagnosis and in the receivables cycle by creating patient medical records.IT-Berater Düsseldorf
What role does Information Technology (IT) play in transcription?
With the evolution of the procedure of patient record creation from the manual to the virtual world, Information Technology plays a critical role at every stage of the procedure like:
- Collections of patient-healthcare professional encounter data.
- Transmission of data to the transcriptionists
- The transcription process
- Transmission of transcribed files to the healthcare professionals
- Archiving of files for future reference
- HIPAA and HITECH compliance
- Integration with EMR systems.
The entire process needs Information technology at every stage to really make the process quicker and secure. Executing transcription in-house would require that the healthcare facility have massive investment in Information technology allow each one of these functions. It’d involve investments in servers for uploading dictation, secure file transfer protocols to distribute work to and collect work from transcriptionists, distribution network for report distribution and powerful archiving to trace dictations, work-in-progress and finished transcripts.
The easy step of outsourcing the whole process of creating patient medical records must a technologically savvy company can eliminate the sum total burden of investment in Information technology. These valuable resources could then be put to raised use.
Explore the Field of Health Information Technology
The healthcare industry is growing faster than ever, and growing with it is the requirement for trained professionals in the field of information technology. With advances in medicine and technology, digital record keeping and data basing have grown to be fundamental elements to modern healthcare facilities.
In accordance with statistics held by the United States Bureau of Labor, job prospects for professional in the information technology field are expected to be among the fastest growing for the following decade. Additionally, technicians are in constant demand by employers, making IT professionals in the industry invaluable. Wages for technicians averaged at $40,610 in 2008, and those holding degrees from accredited universities earned even more.
Healthcare technicians perform a variety of duties relating to organization records handling. Their skills are crucial to efficient patient care. Several of those duties include compiling medical information like medical history, current symptoms, examination results, diagnostic tests, treatment methods, and past healthcare services provided. Workers in this field also organize and manage medical data and ensure the quality and accuracy of data.
As well as careful management of data, technicians are accountable for understanding and using a variety of advanced equipment and technologies. Technicians are now proficient with electronic health records, or EHR. With this sort of software, technicians maintain and analyze every one of a facilities data. Professionals often work to boost the quality of data management, and subscribe to greater quality in overall patient care.
Professionals in the information technology field may hold an associates degree, or higher. Programs in the field are offered at a variety of field, and typically cover a wide range of topics in healthcare and computer systems. At the associate’s level, graduates can get an introductory level of knowledge of the following areas.