Career in Medical Transcription

With the rapid change in the outlook of Indian healthcare and privatization of the insurance sector, Medical transcription has become one of the fastest growing IT enabled service in India. It is an interesting and challenging career that is capable of changing the Indian job scenario.

India has a wide scope for capturing the huge clientele in the US to provide medical transcription service. The large population of educated, English speaking, computer literate people and the comparative low cost encourages companies abroad to outsource their work to the Indian Medical Transcription field.

Medical Transcriptionist is a person who assists physicians and specialty surgeons by transcribing, formatting, and proof reading their dictated medically oriented report of a patient's health history. This dictation covers pretty much everything that takes place between the health care provider and the patient including history and physical reports, clinic notes, office notes, operative reports, consultation notes, discharge summaries, letters, psychiatric evaluations, laboratory reports, x-ray reports and pathology reports. Usually, the information dictated by doctors is recorded either into tape or onto digital voice processing systems. The process of medical transcription is transferring this information using word processing.

Qualifications

It is usually required that Transcriptionists complete a 1-year certificate program or 2-year associate degree. Vocational schools, community colleges, and distance-learning programs offer certificate courses in transcription. The training modules cover subjects like English grammar, Medical terminology, Human anatomy and American English. In-house training programmes are also offered by transcription firms that hire freshers. This on the job training may be adequate for those who have come from another medical field, such as nursing or medical administration.

Skills

Primary skills like good listening and language skills, fluency in English, understanding of American way of speech and accent, and knowledge of medical terms is a must in this field. It does not require specialized IT skills, but the candidate should be comfortable using common applications like word processing and have a good typing speed.

Throughout the career as a medical transcriptionist one would need to keep up with changes in medical terminologies, medical procedures etc. and have the ability to detect medical inconsistencies in dictation and fix poor grammar and syntax. One must also have patience, as the work may get monotonous and repetitive.

This profession demands a high level of concentration over long periods of time. The job requires a lot of hard work, dedication and commitment to deliver the best.

Career Options

The primary task of the medical transcriptionist is to transcribe, format and proofread medical records that are outsourced for transcription from a variety of healthcare settings.

The local transcription company receives the data and the medical transcriptionist transcribes the audio file using a suitable word processing application. This is followed by proofreading and editing, e lectronic spell check, grammar check, checking for medical inconsistencies and inaccuracies etc. The medical record - now in text form - is then routed back to the concerned doctor or hospital.

Medical transcription was initially an in-house affair completed within the four walls of the doctor's office or hospital itself. The advent of high-speed satellite links and the lower costs of outsourcing have brought the MT industry to countries such as India.

Over the last two years, India has become the hub of the global MT industry. L ots of companies have ventured into the field. Since the job requires experience, these companies are expected to recruit a lot of people as trainees and then develop their skills so that they become experts in this field. A typical MT firm is structured as follows: Trained medical transcriptionists, Senior medical transcriptionists, Proofreaders, Sub editors, Editors, Supervisor, Manager.

Medical transcription is a lucrative career with lot of benefits. At the entry level trained medical transcriptionists earn around Rs 5000 per month. With a minimum of six months experience medical transcriptionists can expect to earn Rs.10,000 per month. There are also additional perks and performance incentives. Usually there are editors who help the transcriptionists in their work. If the MTs can become independent and do editors work also they have better prospects to earn more.