Healthcare professionals have a lot on their plates. Not only do they take care of their patients, but they have to deal with a lot of paperwork and long working hours. They also have to create and submit their notes, produce correct medical documentation, and worry about documentation quality, operational productivity, and payor requirements. All these tasks and challenges lead to a stressful work environment which can leave them burnt out.
Dealing with EMRs and speech recognition software isn’t exactly the most relaxing pastime. Luckily, a lot of that stress and many of the potential errors created when physician burnout occurs can be eliminated by outsourcing your documentation to a transcription services provider.
But that’s not the only benefit outsourcing transcription will give you. When you find the right transcription company, you can also save time, money, and resources.
In this article, we’ll talk about the top five reasons for outsourcing your transcription needs.
1. Outsourcing Transcription Saves You Time And Money
One of the top reasons for outsourcing transcription services is that it saves you time. Having providers create their own documentation on top of their regular workload will result in putting in a lot of frustration and extra hours at work. It can also lead to a higher error rate in your documentation.
One way around this is to hire a dedicated, in-house transcription team. Keep in mind, though, that managing a whole new department leads to an increase in cost. Suddenly, you have to worry about paying extra employees, covering their insurance costs, added taxes and legal fees, as well supplying them with proper equipment and software.
In addition to that, it requires a significant time investment as you need to onboard and train new employees.
In short, handling your own healthcare transcription can be a time and money sink that can be spent on other activities such as better patient care, clinical documentation integrity initiatives, managing quality programs, building stronger internal working relationships, and more.
2. Allows You To Expand The Type Of Things You Transcribe
If you’re doing your own transcription, you’re limiting the type of files and content you can transcribe. At first glance, you might be thinking transcription is only for things like medical or legal records.
However, you can use transcription for far more. For example, instead of keeping notes about potential employees during their interview, you can ask for their permission to record the interview and have it transcribed by a professional transcription company.
You can also use transcription services to make your workplace more accessible by transcribing any audio or video material, training, workshop or seminar that’s needed for your company to run smoothly.
Another way to use transcription services is to repurpose your podcast episodes or healthcare community outreach videos as blog posts or within a newsletter. Simply transcribe the podcast episode or a video and republish it. This will allow you to reach a larger audience who might not be familiar with viewing video content and simply want something to read.
A few other things you can transcribe include:
- Webinars or live training
- Corporate meetings
- Market research calls
- Business calls with clients, partners, and colleagues
- Phone interviews and surveys
Not only will those transcriptions make your workplace more accessible but it will also allow your employees to easily review them whenever they need them.
3. Short Turnaround And Better Quality
Let’s face it, you’re great at what you do. And while you might know a lot about running a business, that doesn’t mean you were born with great documentation or transcription skills. Even if you can do it, it will probably take you a lot longer than a professional transcriptionist combined with speech recognition technology. After all, there’s a reason why professionals exist.
A professional transcription company specializes in using audio recordings to produce high-quality transcripts of your files. They are well-versed in word processing, English language, medical and business terminology, typing, editing, and other crucial skills needed to be a transcriptionist.
As a result, they’ll be able to provide you with a short turnaround time for your transcribed files. In fact, most transcription companies provide a 24-hour turnaround guarantee for general business and legal transcription. Medical transcription turnaround times can vary based on the type of document and the facility needs. Short turnaround time is important for all industries but it’s even more important in legal and medical practice as they often deal with time-sensitive cases.
In addition, a transcription company can provide you with a better quality transcript than one you might create yourself, enabling you to avoid legal, billing or insurance issues due to errors. Many transcription companies promise to achieve up to 99% accuracy.
It’s also worth mentioning that a transcription company won’t be influenced by listener bias (where a person subconsciously hears what they expect or want to hear). This means the transcribed files will be objective and impartial.
Objectivity is crucial in cases where your company could be perceived as benefiting from certain content. Impartial third-party transcription is even more important for certain industries, like the legal and medical domains.
4. Reduces Overhead Expenses
We mentioned earlier that you can hire an in-house transcription team to handle all your transcription needs. But that requires a financial investment upfront as well as ongoing expenses.
You may think that outsourcing transcription will be more costly, but in reality, it’s more cost-effective. With an in-house team, you have to pay a regular salary, regardless of how much transcription work needs to be done.
In addition to that, you also need to regularly cover all the other expenses associated with having employees. Similarly to their salary, that amount remains the same, regardless of how much transcription work needs to be done.
On the contrary, when you outsource your transcription services, you only pay for what you need, when you need it. That means if there’s less work one month, you’ll pay less for the transcription than what you would with an in-house team.
On top of that, you don’t have to worry about getting the software and the equipment upfront, let alone worry about maintaining the equipment or upgrading it as needed.
5. You Can Take On More Work
As a result of outsourcing your transcription services, you’ll have more free time in your typical workday. You can use this time to take on more work and have the opportunity to increase your revenue. With more work, you may also have an increased need for transcription. Professional transcription teams can handle that need with ease.
This is where an on-demand transcription service truly provides the most value. Not only will they be able to deliver quality work but they’ll also be able to handle the varied transcription needs and ensure a timely delivery of the finished transcript files.
Final Thoughts
As you can see, outsourcing your transcription saves you time, money, and resources, not to mention a lot of headaches. As a result, you can focus more on your business and reduce burnout and stress within your work environment.
By outsourcing your transcription needs, you’ll get professional and accurate transcripts for a fraction of the cost of employing in-house transcriptionists or doing it yourself. The only thing left to do now is to find a transcription company and get a quote for their services. Good luck!
