Medical Transcription vs. Voice Recognition – a Comparative Study

Medical Transcription vs. Voice Recognition – a Comparative Study

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It is a misconception among many of us that medical transcriptionists work in the outer limits of the healthcare delivery system. Actually medical transcriptionists play a significant role in healthcare documentation. The process of medical transcription begins once the patient consults a physician and seeks advice and treatment for the health problem. The physician then dictates details about the patient encounter using a recording machine. The digital recording is transcribed into text by a medical transcriptionist, and then sent back to the physician or healthcare professionals using a secure medium.

Medical transcriptionists can deliver error-free text even in the face of common challenges such as different accents, mumbling in the conversation, slow or rapid speech or even dictation with disturbing background noise. These transcripts usually maintain a minimum accuracy of 98% and are used as a reference for physicians for future patient visits and ongoing care.

While physicians can do the documentation on their own, transcriptionists and editors can identify and correct simple errors of binary confusion such as left or right, millimetre or centimetre – errors that might easily escape the notice of a physician writing his own notes.

Voice Recognition vs. Medical Transcription  Complex formatting such as boldface, italics, font changes, bulleted lists, indents, tables etc are problematic for voice recognition software. But complex formatting is not an issue for a medical transcriptionist.  Take the case of radiologists who have to repeatedly shift visual attention and then dictate. Though the human brain can view things and speak at the same time, it is impossible to view images and type simultaneously.

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Radiologists attempting to do this have a greater error rate. Recent research published in the American Journal of Roentgenology points out that at least one major error was found in 23% of automated reports compared to 4% of reports produced by human transcription. These errors included missing words, wrong measurement units and nonsense phrases. ďƒž Voice recognition requires considerable work space, as well as expensive hardware and software but in the case of transcription you only need a telephone, word processing software and a transcriber, which is much more affordable. If you choose to outsource transcription, it becomes even more economical. ďƒž With voice recognition, the efficiency of physicians drops by 30 in terms of RVUs per hour during the initial two weeks. This issue may resolve with the passage of time and the experience gained in due course. However, this would require more strenuous effort on the part of the physicians as well as a lot of touch typing, voice typing and editing. This may be a waste of valuable time and of course not the best way in which the education, training and experience of a physician can be put to use.

The Medical Transcriptionist Advantage Medical transcriptionists can work under various circumstances and are trained to provide accuracy in their work. Their experience and expertise ensures that all relevant and valuable information about the patient such as pre- existing ailments or disease, diagnosis and treatment are accurately documented. The transcripts are made available within the desired turnaround time. Above all, the human touch provided by transcriptionists as well as their genuine concern for the welfare of the

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patient, their minute attention to detail, discretion, and simple common sense make them valuable assets to the healthcare industry.

Physicians utilizing medical transcription services can surely enjoy the required level of precision in their documents. Typical advantages also include:  Service of experienced and trained professionals  Stringent quality assurance  HL7 interface  99% accuracy  Convenient online review and editing.

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