Advance for Health Information Professionals gave some details about the recent KLAS study last week.  The study reported on the current trends in the world of medical transcription outsourcing.  I’ve listed a few of the study’s findings in bullet points below:

For providers using MTSO, the overall satisfaction scores rose 4.5 points in 2007 from 77.2 to 81.7 out of a possible 100 points.

Although many are still not comfortable with the idea of sending medical transcription offshore, the overall perception is improving. Some of the benefits of using medical transcription service organizations were faster turnaround times (TAT), reduced costs and improved quality.

Even though the idea of offshore medical transcription is slowly increasing in popularity, the number of provider organizations who reported using them has decreased from 55 percent in 2006 to 38 percent in 2007.

The need for medical transcription is increasing due to a) Electronic medical records and the need to populate them quickly, and b) speech recognition services needing editing on the back end, so many MTSOs are increasing their capacity.

Pricing is also changing.  The most popular method continues to be charging per line (67 percent of respondents use this method), down from 81 percent in 2006.  Those charging by the Visual Black Character (VBC) has grown from 12 percent in 2006 to 23 percent in 2007.  Overall, the average medical transcription price ranges from 11.9 cents to 13.2 cents per line.

Study respondents also listed multiple tips for their fellow providers who are considering outsourced medical transcription, so I condensed those answers as well into a bullet point list:

Look into the whole medical transcription package when choosing a vendor.  For example, some MTSOs may charge less to transcribe, but they might require you to do more quality checks upfront.

If you are thinking of sending work offshore, be sure to look closely at where the work is being performed and the employment policies and practices that mitigate your risk.

Find out how MTs are assigned.

Ask the vendor about their support structure and customer service practices.

Do some investigative work and see how a medical transcription service communicated with providers in the past to get an idea of how communication with your company will be.

Look closely at the types of tools that are available to distribute, track and capture inbounc dictation, work in progress and outbound reports.

Understand how charges will be handled.

Know how quality standards will be measured and ensured.

Click here to read the entire article, Study Reveals Medical Transcription Services Organization Ratings, by Michael K. Smith