A community of 30,000 US Transcriptionist serving Medical Transcription Industry

Proofing advice needed badly - d

Posted: May 03, 2013

I badly need your tips on proofing and what works for you. I was always taught (sorry, old school) to type your document and then proof the entire thing, but that takes a long time, especially when documents are 30+ minutes long. Using that method I do not get any errors. But I am told I need to speed up, so I tried THEIR way of proofing as I go along, but last night made many errors, ugh! What works for you? Your tricks? Your methods? Any tips on speeding up, but NOT increasing errors. God, I feel stupid!

I proof like you... - oldschool

[ In Reply To ..]
Type, then read report through to catch stupid typos and dropped words. I don't listen to voice file as I proof unless I had to blank something.

Tried proofing as I go for about a week once - it was a disaster and took me longer than my way, and I just never felt fully confident that I was really submitting a perfect report. Maybe I'm just too old a dog to learn a new trick.

I re-listen - lexluther

[ In Reply To ..]
I re-listen to the whole voice file and read through the report, but I don't have extremely long voice files like that. I do speed up the voice as much as I can though.

I just do spelling and grammar check, no time to - re-read document...sm

[ In Reply To ..]
If you are doing all straight typing for a reasonable line rate, then I would take the time to look it over - Give it a quick skim, spellcheck and grammar check, but even then I would not re-listen and re-read the whole thing unless it was a hard dictator and I had a few blanks.

I've been doing 99% VR for the last couple of years, so not a lot of straight typing for me.

old school - MaxCynical

[ In Reply To ..]
How can you edit and not listen to the voice file? Particularly when SR generally makes such a mess of everything. I mean, are you just guessing that speech rec generates exactly what the doctor said? Just curious . . .

MaxCynical...see message - Old Anon

[ In Reply To ..]
No one said anything about not listening while they edit SR. We are talking about straight transcription, not SR, and doing a complete read through when finished.

LOL - oldschool

[ In Reply To ..]
Sorry Max - this is straight typing. Have to admit I'm chuckling at the thought of editing and not listening to the voice file - wouldn't that be a hoot, LOL.

We're talking proofing after the report is done.

oldschool - MaxCynical

[ In Reply To ..]

(I should know better than to assume) but so few people do straight transcription anymore I just assumed it was editing. Sorry. My Bad.

I stopped doing anything but a cursory eyeball of - the document afterward, mainly - sm

[ In Reply To ..]
looking for anything glaringly wrong. At what they pay, I just can't afford to slow myself down any further than I already am by the company's pokey software. So, I just take my chances and hope for the best. I'm almost out of this ridiculous field, anyway.

I started out doing it all (sm) - Angie

[ In Reply To ..]
But after researching/correcting the constant lack of demographic info, finally finding the right patient, looking up every "Dr. Peterson" for sp., first name and fax number, searching prior reports for missing information, last night I said to hell with all this free labor these people are getting. I was making a maximum of $4.00 per hour when including all these free services. I'm just trying to stick to editing, or the work we actually get paid for and let QA, management, or the client do their own research!

Doing it all - Just me

[ In Reply To ..]
As a QA person, I do think it is our job to research demographic info, doctor names, etc. I can also see not wanting to take too much time researching blanks, that is my job. On the flip side, I see things that are just careless mistakes, the MTs who are working on our account should know better, some of them are critical errors. I work for the client and am supposed to be the last step in the QA process and I still see a lot of errors (some of them critical, i.e., incorrect meds and incorrect lab values) that should not be occurring. The frustrating/discouraging thing for me is that my feedback never seems to get addressed. When I worked as an MT, I also would edit as I transcribed and that seemed to work well for me too. I wasn't the fastest person but got good QA scores. Quality doesn't seem to matter as much these days, but I always took pride in my work (I am talking back in the day before production and low pay became the standard).

I have to respectfully disagree... - Angie

[ In Reply To ..]
When I worked directly for doctors and charged .14 cents per line I did include the required research in my line rate. However, when we make less than a third of what we made 20 years ago, we cannot possibly include all this free labor. It is the dictator's job to enter the correct demographics and know how to use his/her EMR software - not ours. We do not get paid for that - they do.

Next point is that most dictators do not even know the basics of how to dictate. They have no right to not hit the pause button when reviewing a chart, requiring we sit there without any compensation because they are too lazy or ignorant to hit a pause key.

How much time does it take the doctor to include the first name of a physician he wants to cc - a 5th of a second? How much time does it take us when we don't even know what town the doctor is in, we obtain a list of doctors with that last name and have to search out their specialties to try to narrow it down to the right doctor. If the dictators are too lazy to dictate the first name, they can spend the time looking up the doctors info. Again, we are not paid for that.

When you get errors in medications and dosage, you need to look at the dictator first as I would bet that 99% of the time it is dictator error. If they dictate the wrong medication or dose (frequently) they are not paying us to review the last 10-20 patient reports to confirm that they really are on this medication. The dictators should be more conscientious and put some effort into maintaining the accuracy of their patient's records.

Just as you are seeing careless transcription mistakes, we have a tremendous increase in dictator mistakes and just plain apathy to their patient's wellbeing, i.e. deliberately slurring through a ROS or PE which is just plain irresponsible and risking the jobs of good MTs who will be penalized or fired for the blanks they have to leave when it is in the patient's best interest not to just transcribe the usual phrases whether you actually hear them or not.

I do agree that it is our job to provide an accurate transcript of what the dictator actually dictated. It is their responsibility not to make continued careless mistakes.

You said: "before production and low pay became the standard" - there you have it in a nutshell..sm

[ In Reply To ..]
"before production and low pay became the standard" people had time to do more research and re-read and even re-listen to the whole report if necessary. Most research comes with the territory such as labs, medications etc. But doctor's names, addresses for cc's...not at 4 cpl. Sorry, but at 4 cpl who has time to look up Dr. John Smith located in a different state? And you are lucky if you get the first name "John" most of the time they will just say copy Dr. Smith.

You cannot expect people to perform clerical work when they are being paid based on production at 4cpl. My job is to edit or transcribe your document, not perform secretarial duties and look up information that the doctor should have right in front of him when he sits down to dictate; such as the patient's names, medical record numbers, *first* and *last names* of the physicians to recieve copies.

I will hold myself responsible for the content of the body of the report such as labs and medications, diagnosis etc. but the physicians should be held accountable for demographics and cc's.

I do that too, plus my grammar feature of spellcheck - activated

[ In Reply To ..]
My platform will just pick up spelling errors when I sign off a report, but before I send, I glance over it for a grammar check, reviewing the underlined green things. Sometimes I've caught gross expander errors and other minor, but important things I've inadvertently typed (sometimes I'll randomly and inexplicably add an 'ly' as I go).

Also, with the dictators who just dictate streaming thoughts without any sense of ending a thought (the most challenging part of transcribing to me), I always re-read, but usually on a paragraph-by-paragraph method.

edit as you go - anon

[ In Reply To ..]
I learned to edit as I type. Not a skill I set out to do, just kind of realized after being an MT for years that I was doing it.

At rates these days, I don't see how anyone can afford to listen to an entire dictation again, even the short ones.

I guess the best way to explain "editing as you type" is that when the dictator pauses for whatever reason, I skim what I have been typing for errors. If I need to hit the pedal to rewind, there may be a few seconds that I have to wait for the dictation to catch up to the place I wanted it. While relistening for half a sentence or so, I'm quickly proofreading previous sentences.

This editing technique happens so quickly, but you can train your eyes to do it. Not to brag, but I rarely get less than 100% on QA, so it is an effective way to edit.

I'm still working on edit as I go. - Angie

[ In Reply To ..]
I catch blatant errors as I go, but I am still proofing everything because I am still finding little things like "he" vs. "she". I also use their lengthy pauses to proof and have a quick short form to mark the spot. "kk" puts an aqua highlighted "PR" so I can get back to it quickly and not risk leaving it in a document.

Voice Wreck or transcribing? - see msg

[ In Reply To ..]
When I do straight typing, I just proof as I go, then eyeball the entire report before sending.

With ASR, I listen and fix as I go, then listen again and fix anything I may have missed because my quality slipped.

So, then I got in trouble for my low production. And then I quit and am not doing MT anymore.

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