Benefits Of A Medical Transcription Business

You have decided to start a home based business. Now the problem is choosing which business to pursue. Usually, before a person decides to begin their business, a lot of research needs to be done. Your demographic area determines if the product you have to sell will be in demand by the public. Marketing a product that is already saturated in the area in which you live spells disaster for your business in its infancy. This article cuts through all of that research and presents you with a home based business product whose demand will continue to increase over the coming years.

Medical transcription is an at home business that offers tremendous benefits for those who choose to pursue it. One benefit of this business is setting your own hours of operation. The problem with traditional office jobs is that they are not structured to accommodate children’s school schedules, family illnesses, and emergencies. My children go to school late so going to work at an earlier hour means leaving them home to see themselves off to school in the morning. The flexible hours that this home based business provides allows you to tend to family issues as they arise. You don’t have to get permission to leave work because you are the boss!

Another benefit of a home based business like this is the low overhead. “Overhead” refers to the costs involved in operating your business that are subtracted from the bottom line to determine your business profits. Other new businesses that require a building or need to employ workers will have higher operating costs including employer provided health insurance.

At home, the cost to you will be limited to the equipment used to retrieve the dictation, a computer with word processing software (if you don’t already own one), a desk, a chair, and a phone. Most of what you need, you may already have. Also, these things can be written off on your taxes as a business expense, and that includes the square footage of the room that you choose to be your base of operations. Less overhead costs equal more profits for your business.

Medical transcriptionists are employed in hospitals, doctor’s offices, and transcription services. Most companies that hire medical transcriptionists require hospital experience. Length of service differs from company to company. The beauty of this field is that you can work in the hospital setting to gain the necessary experience and grow your business at the same time. Working part-time in a hospital or office will give you a feel for the industry in your particular area. Joining a professional medical transcription organization will help you network among others in the profession to increase your business.

Beginning any new business requires time and hard work. A medical transcription business offers low overhead, flexible work schedules, and a product that will stay in demand as long as there are doctors. These benefits make it appealing to those who are tired of the grind and want a more balanced family life.

Sphere: Related Content

Voice Recognition And Medical Transcription

Yes, voice recognition in the medical transcription field has indeed become a reality. Doctors sputter and mangle their dictation into the phones as usual, but software now translates this into English words.You’ve probably heard different opinions and views on this subject. If you’re a medical transcriptionist you may even be concerned about voice recognition taking over your career… and you’re not alone.

Sure, human beings are still needed. You see, when the doctor corrects himself or asks the transcriber to go back to a previous section and insert more text, software doesn't know how to do that. A person does.Presumably this is because editing is easier and faster than transcribing. Well, it can be, but there is still a lot of correcting to do. A 20% to 30% pay cut is hard to swallow when nearly as much time is spent on the job.

At this time there is no voice recognition software which can handle this type of voice recognition. It is impossible for the software to determine actual speech from mistakes in conversation, background noise, heavy accents, etc.

So what does this mean for our future?

Rumors of MTs being out of r a job have been around long before I became an MT. Eight years later, there are still no real advances in this field.

Can voice recognition ever replace transcriptionists?

Sure it can.

If a doctor is willing to sit down and take the sufficient time to train his voice recognition software to recognize his voice and speech patterns (this takes time and is not done automatically), yes it is possible.If the doctor thereafter dictates very clearly, using proper punctuation in his speech (stopping for periods, pausing for commas) without any background noise or interruptions.

Not unless every physician out there is willing to take the time, energy and ongoing effort to train their voice recognition software and maintain a certain standard of dictation.This being said, it is important to keep in mind that this is not and will probably never be the case for ALL physicians.

I don’t see that happening any time soon. Doctors are busy people, remember?

If anything, us MTs should embrace voice recognition and use it as a tool to help us in our MT careers. If applied properly, it can be a time-saving tool. So why not use it for our purposes? Another emerging trend is the implementation of speech recognition technology, which electronically translates sound into text and creates drafts of reports. Reports are then formatted; edited for mistakes in translation, punctuation, or grammar; and checked for consistency and possible medical errors.

Sphere: Related Content