Medical transcription service companies provide the clerical support healthcare professionals relied upon for years, but then lost.
The promise of EMRs to replace transcription services never really worked as advertised. New (and often user unfriendly) technologies didn’t eliminate the need for entering and organizing patient data; it just shifted the work to physicians and clinicians.
That added work is clearly having an impact on the health and well-being of those care providers. In one example (of many), a 2020 Forbes article reported that physicians spend on average 16 minutes and 14 seconds per patient actively entering data in the patient’s EMR. However, as the article points out, the average patient visit is only 15 minutes long. Figure that one out.
The writer highlights the fact that doctors aren’t technophobes – quite the opposite. He reports hearing about their love of various technologies such as social media. But few doctors mention loving their EMRs. With hours of extra – and uncompensated – work, who can blame them?
How Can Medical Transcription Service Companies Help?
Medical transcription servicessuch as iMedat can help take the stress and burden off physicians and clinicians. There are at least 5 great reasons to work with medical transcription service companies:
- Reduce physician and clinician burnout
- Improve office efficiencies
- Increase patient capacity – and associated billables
- Reduce the need for in-house transcription – and associated costs
- Provide a higher standard of patient care
1. Reduce physician and clinician burnout
Physician and clinician burnout is a growing concern. Much of it relates directly to those now forced to maintain their own patient records. EMRs make accessing patient data much, much easier. On the other hand, properly entering that data in the right spots, tagging it, and making the data useable can be time consuming and requires technical knowledge.
It’s simple: reduce the physician and clinician workload, particularly in terms of clerical work, and you’ll reduce physician and clinician burnout. Medical transcription service companies such as iMedat can alleviate as much of that clerical work that’s needed.
2. Improve office efficiencies
Physicians and clinicians are not necessarily trained in EMR data entry. Even those who are fairly comfortable with their system report a common problem: it gets in the way of patient interactions. More on that below, but the point here is that the clinician needs to multi-task. Both these situations – multi-tasking and lack of training – can result in errors in the patient documents.
One of the most common issues is adding structured data as unstructured data through notes. This can be a side effect of physician multi-tasking (i.e., it’s faster for the overworked clinician to add a note than to search for the appropriate structured field). That can cause challenges down the road with communication, standardization (especially in larger clinics, multi-site organizations, and health networks), and research. As you can imagine, these eventualities defeat the purpose of EMRs in a lot of ways, reducing efficiency and usefulness. Either these unstructured datasets are left in the patient record, or office staff needs to do audits and edits to adjust them.
iMedat’s medical transcription services ensures that data is captured properly, tagging transcription so that it can automatically populate the right fields within your EMR system.
3. Increase patient capacity – and associated billables
Physicians often need to cap their daily caseload because of all the associated administrative work involved. This one is a simple equation, too: the less time physicians spend filling in patient records, the more time they’ll have seeing patients.
That’s where a professional medical transcription services company such as iMedat comes in. We take care of the clerical work so clinicians have more time to spend with patients.In turn, that can lead to boosting both the number of patients they see each day AND their associated billables.
4. Reduce the need for in-house transcription – and associated costs
Some offices, clinics, and health networks are hesitant of transcription services because they don’t want to hire a large in-house group of transcriptionists. Here is where a transcription service really helps. With companies such as iMedat, you don’t have to worry about extra office space, equipment, or other associated costs of hiring staff such as vacation time. Plus, you only pay for the transcription you need – something else that isn’t possible in a salaried in-house position.
5. Provide a higher standard of patient care
Don’t kid yourself – patients notice when their primary care provider spends more time staring at a screen than looking at them! Patients report it can be difficult to get their attention. Further, that lack of attention can fail patients in other ways. Dr. Alain Chaoui, former president of the Massachusetts Medical Society, said that physicians are missing out on important clues such as body language when they are looking at a laptop or tablet instead of their patient. They aren’t having meaningful conversations with their patients, and they are likely not problem solving effectively or thinking creatively either.
Switching to a medical dictation solution or a virtual medical scribe solution can improve this situation tremendously. Clinicians spend less time staring at their screens and more time interacting with their patients – as they should!
Bring Back Medical Transcription Service Companies for Better Patient Care, Higher Billables, and Lower Clinician Stress
The verdict: medical transcription service companies such as iMedat can improve your clinic in many different ways. With iMedat, you get:
- Lower clinician stress
- A more streamlined office
- More patients and higher billables
- Better patient care
Contact iMedat to find out how we can help improve your office, too.