The Association for Healthcare Documentation Integrity (AHDI) and the Medical Transcription Industry Association (MTIA) recently announced the launch of the new and improved Career Connection web site: www.careerconnection.ahdionline.org.

It’s designed to connect medical transcriptionist and healthcare documentation specialist employers with the largest, most qualified audience of medical transcription industry professionals.

Specifically, the online medical transcription job board offers the following:

1. Easy online management of job postings, including job activity reports
2. Access to search-able resume database
3. Competitive pricing
4. Automatic email notification when new resumes match your criteria
5. Resume posting for MT job seekers

The Volume 22, Number 5 issue of For The Record magazine had an interesting article entitled: Offshore Transcription: A Seaworthy Choice. For the benefit of our medical transcription blog readers,  the medical transcription funding specialists at PRN Funding took the liberty of summarizing the article’s key points below:

First and foremost, the offshore medical transcription industry is growing, with the Philippines and India leading the market share. One major reason for the increase in popularity is cost savings. In fact, Sharon Fremer (VP of transcription for Precyse Solutions) said that the average savings can amount to 15%-20%. In addition, the U.S. can benefit by utilizing offshore transcriptionists to make up for shortages in the profession in the states.

Still, there are some who continue to oppose sending transcription overseas. Chris Simons (RHIA, director of utilization management and HIM and the privacy officer at Spring Harbor Hospital) told the magazine that she believes the risks outweigh the benefits. Particularly, Simons doubts the security of sending files overseas, and she feels that keeping jobs in the U.S. will help raise salaries in an industry where employees are typically underpaid.

The article also included 10 Questions that providers should ask when considering an offshore medical transcription option:

1. How can the offshore vendor ensure security, including both audio files and transcribed data?
2. Do U.S. facilities have the ability to track and audit records in real-time?
3. Do the foreign transcriptionists work in a secure environment? This is especially important, as the trend for American transcriptionists is to work from home.
4. What is the disaster plan to weather-related or other type of operational disaster occurs?
5. How often will the American facility  audit the offshore transcription service?
6. What types of training do offshore MTs receive (including English language)?
7. If there is a question regarding unclear dictation, how will the query be handled?
8. What happens if an offshore medical transcription does not meet quality standards?
9. What is the turnaround time?
10. Does the offshore transcription service provide around-the-clock coverage?

For more information, check out the March 15th edition of For The Record.

Susan Lucci (AHDI’s President) recently appointed a National Board subcommittee to research future roles for MTs within the EHR. According to a Plexus article, entitled: MT Career Transitions, the goals of the committee were to “define roles, describe the necessary skills sets required for each role, define the educational requirements, visualize a career lattice for MTs, and publicize and market our findings.”

Here are some of the more common threads the committee has detected thus far:

1. Becoming credentialed as a CMT is more critical than ever to demonstrate medical language knowledge.
2. Coding knowledge is also expected to be much more critical to future roles in the EHR.
3. MTs will need more education of SNOMED (Systematized Nomenclature for Medicine), ICD-10 and CPT (current procedural terminology) codes.
4. Transcriptionists will need additional technical skills, including familiarity with database management, basic Health Level Seven interface language and how to maneuver within the EHR.
5. Most new roles will require an associate’s degree, with many roles requiring a bachelor’s degree and beyond.
6. The location of where MTs perform transcription is also expected to change, as many MTs will transition back into the hospital setting.
7. Hospitals will need trainers to ensure quality control with medical documents, which opens up another job opportunity for MTs.
8. Roles for credentialed CMTs will be needed to transcribe, edit and review documentation from a variety of resources utilizing front-end speech, back-end speech and traditional audio-to-text conversion.
9. MTs could also have roles in an ambulatory setting, in which they will perform traditional audio-text narratives and may utilize speech recognition editing.

Advance for Health Information Professionals recently published an online article entitled: Beyond Transcription – Speech Recognition Holds Promise for Patient Care that discussed other ways the medical industry can use SRT (Speech Recognition Technology).

Although most MTs fear SRT will put them out of a job,this article delved into the voice-to-text technology, and its uses for patient follow-up, medication adherence and health screenings.

Specifically, some physicians are using speech recognition to “schedule calls to patients with customized questions and let the system do the data gathering.” The web-based calling systems listen for a human response and then communicate those responses to the physicians involved as well as record it on an Electronic Health Record (EHR).

Of course, some problems can arise when collecting the automatized data. Namely, the patient has to cooperate. Many patients don’t answer the phone or can’t complete the analysis because they are using their cell phones and cannot hear or are distracted. Also, the entire system relies on patients to tell the truth.