Are you looking for a competent medical transcription service provider? If yes, you have come to the right place.
Medical transcription is a must-have service for any medical practice. It helps you transform audio recordings or notes into text files for storage and future reference. While you can use voice recognition software or get a few of your employees to do the job, hiring a third-party medical transcription service provider is always the best option.
A typical day at the hospital or any other medical practice involves a lot of written and dictated notes. These pieces of information need transcription services to become official administrative documents. Luckily, a transcription service does exactly that. A competent transcription service provider frees up your medical team to attend to more patients without worrying about after-work administrative work.
But first, you have to find a reliable online medical transcription service provider. Let’s look at some of the questions to ask before you hire one.
Top 5 Questions to Ask While Choosing Your Medical Transcription Service Provider
Are You Certified and How Many Years Have You Been in the Industry?
Before you hire a medical transcription service provider, it may be a good idea to find out if they are certified. Like any other profession, an individual needs certification to provide medical transcription services. So, it is important to find out whether the company hires certified employees before anything else.
Besides certification, experience is another thing you might want to check before hiring a medical transcription service provider. Ideally, you would like to hire an expert with around 10 years in the industry.
What is Your Turnaround Time?
Before choosing a medical transcription service provider, the other important thing you should know is their turnaround time. In most cases, transcriptions services offer an average turnaround time of 24hrs. That provides them with enough time to complete the job but still ensures that they get the results soon enough to attend to patients’ needs within a practical timeframe.
Some transcription needs might even take less or more than 24 hours to complete. In any case, you need to ensure you agree with the turnaround time offered by the medical transcription service provider before you hire their services.
What are Your Rates?
The cost is the next most important factor to consider before choosing a medical transcription service provider. There are several different factors that determine the medical transcription service fees. These include location, specialty among other factors.
In most cases, medical transcription service providers use lines to price their services. Others may charge you by the keystroke. In any case, it is crucial to find a company with a reasonable price and within your budget.
What are Your Security Protocols?
The security of your data is a critical factor to consider before you choose a medical transcription service provider. Data breaches have become all too common today. They result in many things, including theft, loss, exposure and impermissible disclosure of confidential medical records.
So, it is paramount to enquire about security protocols before you hire a medical transcription service provider. There are two primary ways to ensure protection and security in transcription services: compliance with General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). If a medical transcription service provider hasn’t complied with these two policies, you should steer away from them.
Do You Provide References?
Another thing you should find out before you hire a medical transcription service provider is the quality of services they offer their clients. So, make sure you ask previous clients if they would hire the company again in the future.
To do that, you might have to request the company to provide you with their contact information. Then, invest your time into contacting them and get a general idea of the quality of services to expect from the medical transcription service provider.
Conclusion
Hiring an online transcription service provider is not an easy job, especially with many options to choose from. However, you can make the task easier by formulating the right interview questions. There is an almost endless number of questions you can add to the list, but these are the most important ones.
