Will Voice Recognition Ruin Your Medical Transcription Career?
Will Dragon Voice Recognition Replace Medical Transcriptionist?
There have been people who have been worried about voice recognition destroying the medical transcription industry for a while now. Voice recognition software is nowhere near finished.
Many doctors don't want to take the time to learn a new system. Many doctors also complain about the accuracy of the transcription (formatting and punctuation) and the quality. It is very time consuming for a doctor to speak clearly and proofread everything he is writing. Many doctors talk to fast, eat lunch while dictating, drive, etc, and are too busy to sit down in front of a computer to carefully dictate. But even if they did take the time to dictate in front of computer, the end result would still require a lot of correcting. What busy doctor wants to spend time in front of a computer dictating and correcting dictations when they can be seeing patients?
The Medical Recognition Software cannot think, analyze, or make conclusions of its own, but on the other hand a medical transcriptionist makes logical deductions to arrive at a conclusion to deliver a complete medical record. The changes are happening so slowly that you can pretty much rely on it taking a very long time for the software to reach a point where it could be a danger.
Will Outsourcing Work Ruin Your Medical Transcription Career?
Will Outsorcing Replace Medical Transcriptionist?
This is another issue I hear about a lot. While it is well-known that there is a definite shortage of qualified Medical Transcriptionists in the US, some transcription services, healthcare facilities, and doctors are now getting their transcription work done offshore. They are using these offshore accounts because they are much cheaper (these outsourced transcriptionists often work for a fraction of what transcriptionists are paid in the US).
But there is a lot of concern about the quality of the finished transcriptions, since they are not native English-speakers. Many outsourced transcriptionists simply do not have the requisite basic education to do the job with reasonable accuracy, as well as additional, occupation-specific training in medical transcription. Many foreign medical transcriptionists who can speak English are not familiar with American expressions and/or the slang doctors often use, and can be unfamiliar with American names and places. There are other concerns about confidentiality and accountability. Some are speculating that the outsourcing of medical records may eventually be deemed to not be HIPAA-compliant.
No one can foresee the future of medical transcription, but I don't think there's any reason for any US-based medical transcriptionist to assume that outsourcing is destined to take over all medical transcription in the USA. Some transcription services, healthcare facilities, and doctors are definitely not comfortable having their transcription done overseas. While others only think of cutting costs and offshore transcription is usually cheaper, many transcription services, healthcare facilities, and doctors choose to employ US-transcriptionists as they believe the quality of work is better. The next time you are looking for a new position as a medical transcriptionist you are going to come across this a lot, "NO OFFSHORE". There are many employers of medical transcriptionists that definitely prefer to hire their transcriptionists to be US-based.
Next step: Medical Reports:
