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

EMR and the future of transcription - Concerned

Posted: Jul 27, 2011

With the president's health care reform he is giving incentives to doctors to switch to EMR. From what I understand, if doctors have not switched over to EMR by 2014 they will be taxed. What is the future of our business with this policy? Especially the big transcription companies like Transcend?

The biggest single issue right now is that our work be recognized - by the government as contributing to

[ In Reply To ..]
"meaningful use." If it is included in that definition, physicians, whose time is infinitely more valuable and frequently in very short supply, can get paid by Medicare, etc., for using our services in their recordkeeping.

We know what it means for nobody to clean up after SR, but others do not, including physicians who are using SR but aren't spending the necessary time to edit it because the sky hasn't crashed down on their heads yet. Or are dictating content too brief to adequately explain the patient story. Just wait until an insurance company has to mount a defense and gets hold of one of THOSE files.

Many people are busy educating decision makers about the limitations of SR, including one of us who's right now busy collecting information on line FROM US on errors we're seeing in our reports. This from-the trenches-study, discussing "medical transcription" "identifying errors, protecting patients" is a big eye opener to many who'd initially gotten most of their information from SR salesman. I write those down as they come along and post them to her to do us all some good. Not just the silly-sounding stuff like "patted the apple" for "palpated the abdomen" but really critical errors, like SR deciding to ADD "Coumadin" to a clearly dictated medication list that did not include it or to substitute "sulfa" allergy for a clearly spoken "penicillin" allergy.

Assuming the worth of editing and transcribing text is recognized and included, current thought is there should still be some jobs in the future, albeit less work per patient percentagewise, and the work may well morph to include other functions everyone is still in the guessing stage over right now. What skill and salary levels nobody knows, but decent jobs possibly could require more college-level training for us to be able to transition to them.

As for the big companies, they're all very busy making sure they morph themselves to provide any and all services needed in future--including not only us but every marketable alternative to us, plus new services never possible before, like the data mining they're already doing for the very clients we work on now.

On the plus side, we are still needed so far and are well positioned to continue on, not only in whatever future editing/transcription positions there are, but by building on the skills we have to perform additional functions. The number of patients is expected to rise dramatically in future, and we do know that lots of people whose skills fit the job descriptions of the future will be working on their records.

Clients think CPOE is required for EMR - angryMT

[ In Reply To ..]
I just lost 2 of my last 3 remaining steady clients because they are under the false impression that transcription is not allowed in order to get the goodies the government is promising. I asked one of them where they got that idea and that's what she said. I don't see any reason why transcription can't also be an EMR. I'm thinking of seeing a lawyer to sue the government for eliminating our jobs.

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