Transcription Outsourcing- Can EMRs and EHRs Replace Medical Transcription Needs?

According to a survey conducted by KLAS Research on HIM executives, HIM departments at hospitals continue to outsource transcription and coding tasks even after implementing an EHR. The use of EHR hasn’t reduced the need for medical transcription services at hospitals. This is because in most institutions, physician documentation is the last function to be rolled out in the health record system.

Majority of hospitals across the US still outsource a part of their medical transcription needs to a third party. The survey also found out that a significant number of these organizations plan on increasing or maintaining the use of outsourced transcription services in the future. Cost-saving is one of the major factors that have encouraged providers to seek services from a third party rather than hiring in-house transcriptionists.

It was believed that medical transcription needs will get eliminated once Electronic Medical Records (EMRs) are implemented. But according to the industry experts, use of EMRs can be boosted through error-free medical transcription. Some of the benefits include:

Time-saving

It can be a time consuming task to document patient encounters in an EMR. However, physician time can be utilized effectively by incorporating EMR with medical transcription. Transcription will decrease documentation tasks for physicians because the clerical, data-entry responsibilities will be handled by someone else

Revenue Management

Physicians lose precious time in feeding clinical documentation into the EMR. Due to this, they end up reducing the number of patients seen. Few patients mean less income. However, providers can overcome this revenue loss by using transcription as their EMR’s documentation tool.

Easy Integration

With the help of a medical transcription integrated EMR, it has become easy for the physicians to focus on patient care and other clinical tasks.

Doctors can improve productivity at their practice by choosing a reputed transcription service provider. They can also increase their accuracy through the integration of transcription and EMR. It helps eliminate errors that are caused due to free-text typing. Transcription experts can also offer assistance in improving the documentation quality by identifying errors in the dictation.

Be it in-house or outsourced, medical transcription services can help expand EMR adoption. By choosing to outsource medical transcription services, doctors can get access to timely, error-free documents. It offers them rich narrative information that cannot be easily attained through EMR templates. When integrated or used with the EMR, transcription services offer a complete and meaningful note.

There is no need to feel threatened by the growing popularity of EHRs or EMRs. Medical transcription services will always be in requirement by doctors and healthcare professional.

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