Wednesday, November 26, 2008

Outsourcing Transcription To Save Costs

With the increase in demand to keep a record of the medical documents, many developed countries have now started to outsource medical transcription work to developing countries. The profits earned through medical transcription outsourcing services are constantly increasing in the US market.It is basically to save on the costs that developed countries prefer to outsource these services. Not only is the labor in developing countries cheap but also the currency rates of these countries are cheaper as compared to the developed countries like US.

In the past medical and business transcription was performed by in house based employees. This means that the institution not only had to pay salaries, health care benefits, vacation and sick pay for their employees, they also had the expense of the physical space and equipment needs. Hospitals and other institutions have found that outsourcing of their transcription needs eliminates some of these internal management responsibilities and costs.

Looking for ways to cut costs has become a way of life in most medical offices and institutions. One very efficient way to reduce expenditures has been found to be the outsourcing of medical transcription services.Most institutions pay on an average 28 to 36 percent more for their in house transcription then they would pay for the same if it was outsourced. Studies done in the past have found that a production based transcriptionist working in her or his home has a cost of nearly 37 percent less per character than an in house transcriptionist.

Another consideration of outsourcing transcription is accuracy of work and turn around time. Even with on site transcriptionists many hospitals have physician complaints regarding the quality and accuracy of the transcription and the turn around time of their dictations. Turn around time is directly related to the productivity of the worker. It was found that on site transcriptionists have many more disruptions and a much lower production rate when compared to outsourced transcriptionists. The on site transcription production rate is around 39 percent less than production based and home based transcription production rates.

At the completion of a nearly two year study it was found that hospitals and other institutions could save as much as 33 - 38 percent a year utilizing outsourced transcriptions services.

Outsourcing will also help you improve income in your department as you save a lot on costs of medical transcriptionists. Last but not least, you also save a lot of overhead cost as you do not have to pay for any employee insurance and other such added expenses of having permanent employees. So, whether outsourcing for MT services is good or bad depends on your individual perspective more than anything else.

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