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

If everyone is so worried about endangering patient care.... - Fed Up

Posted: Sep 23, 2010

or a patient dying because of mistakes made in dictation/transcription, then why in the world is it acceptable for any dictator, be it MD, PA, NP, etc. to get on the phone to dictate half asleep, eating, or even probably drunk and get so confused themselves that there is no way you can understand what they are trying to say. When this happens REPEATEDLY, this person is called a "difficult dictator." However, if you make a mistake on their transcript or send it to QA, you are the one ridiculed. If someone, for whatever reason, is constantly unable to dictate clearly in complete sentences - THAT is the person who should be called out and accused of endangering patient care. Why is this person's unintelligible garbage acceptable to any medical facility or transcription service??? If we transcribed in such a manner, we would be fired in less than a minute. Anyone dictating should be held to the same standards!!!

Thanks for letting me get that off my chest! Done.

We as MTs have no control over what is dictated - We can only control what we produce

[ In Reply To ..]
Not second-guessing what is being said, leaving blanks for QA as appropriate, and all in all just doing the very best we can with whatever garbage we are given.

Gone are the days where we can directly interact with the physicians regarding their dictation; therefore, all we can do is the best we can do with the tools at hand.

Just because person A (the dictator) does a shoddy job is not excuse for the MT to follow suit and produce an equally shoddy document, IMHO.

When it is a dictator as mentioned, the report is shoddy regardless. - QA of no help.

[ In Reply To ..]
When a report has discrepancies, inconsistencies, blanks all over it, etc., there is only so much QA or any MT can do. Sometimes you have no choice but to produce what is dictated. That does not mean you are a shoddy MT at all. Can you imagine other healthcare professionals reading some of these reports? And the person who dictated them does not care. I agree, someone should call them on it. It also costs a lot of money for someone to dictate as described by using extra time from the MT and more than 1 QA person before returning a useless report.

Nobody mentioned - SouhernMT

[ In Reply To ..]
that it was acceptable to send through shoddy work. Personally I've had it with diva doctors and ancillaries who expect us to weave spun-gold reports out of moldy straw dictation, and woah to anyone with the audacity to leave a blank. No offense to anyone, just my 2 cents, though I should just hush and be thankful to have a job nowadays.

The only thing Disgusting & Appalling is ur response - Let me add ignorant

[ In Reply To ..]
Such an inflammatory comment! Reducing a genuine concern to form your suggestion of working at a salad bar? The only grounds for being disgusted and appalled is with your very own ignorant commenting/response.

I totally agree with you! We MTs are not 100% - to blame for med-record errors. nm

[ In Reply To ..]

What kills me - MY2c

[ In Reply To ..]
is how someone came out with a list of "dangerous abbreviations" but not a peep about DANGEROUS DICTATORS. Geez!

I have seen more Drs dangerous to patient care than any MT ever could be. - Just sayin....NM

[ In Reply To ..]
X

Don't try to excuse shoddy work you may produce by what others do. - Disgusted and Appalled

[ In Reply To ..]
We are and have always been responsible for our own work product. Just as dictators are responsible for their own. That is the way it should be.

The only difference with the new regulations, and made very doable with advances in technology, is that we are more likely to be tracked down and held accountable for our own mistakes. Don't like the idea of responsibility (and sounds like you REALLY don't!)? Go take a job at a more appropriate level of responsibility, maintaining a salad bar perhaps.

Regarding maintaining a salad bar - sm

[ In Reply To ..]
This carriers a MUCH higher level of DIRECT responsibility for the safety and health of the general public than transcribing a medical report.

Consider if the responsible party fails to wash his/her hands after using the bathroom, or is a hepatitis B carrier and transmits this or any number of other communicable diseases directly to the food.

Oh, I know. They'd get fired in very short order there, though. Everyone can - Disgusted

[ In Reply To ..]
relate at a gut level to the immediate problem this type of worker poses in that position. NO one wants to eat where they work. NO one should accept that standard in our work.

To Disgusted - What ????? - Perplexed

[ In Reply To ..]
How in the world did this post response go from expecting cooperation from a dictating physician to someone working at a salad bar and not washing their hands?? And you comparing that to the original complaint? Honey, you are waaaay out there.

While I do not mind doing my part in transcription, correcting grammar, deleting sentences repeated 5 times, figuring out common drug names that a dictator can not say, leaving appropriate blanks, and on and on - I do believe that the dictator has some responsibility in what is to be a final legal formal medical document and should be requested to recognize that responsibility when appropriate. If they do not, they are costing everyone additional time and money, not to mention putting the patient's care at risk. Shoddy dictation will produce a shoddy medical report no matter how good the MT is - and a good MT has pointed that out.

BUT many of us are held accountable to blanks being left - shortcake

[ In Reply To ..]
in reports due to no fault of our own. I know I spend way too much time referencing and I know that is part of the job, BUT, again some of these docs don't make it easy and we pay for it in may ways (including income). By the tone of your post, you must have a very cushy account or you are not an MT. Oh, and not very nice either.

Agree with shortcake - sm

[ In Reply To ..]
My last company gave me an account with one of the worst ESL docs I have ever come across. Everything in his dictation was garbled and he sounded like he was dictating while driving down the highway. I many times had to send at least 10-15 blanks in his reports and had huge chunks I couldn't for the life of me figure out. When I would get the report back from QA, they couldn't figure it out either, yet I was still deducted points for leaving the blanks. I had this dictator frequently enough that it really affected my QA score. All my other reports were 99-100%, but my overall score was much lower due to getting this doctor so often. I finally got an email that if I didn't get my QA score up, I would lose all benefits.

So why is the MT penalized when it is the doctor that can't dictate? Why should the MT lose medical benefits they need when they are doing the best they can with the dictation provided? I could see if all my other reports were graded poorly, but they weren't, and even QA couldn't understand this doctor, so why was I being punished for this doctor's lousy dictation?

I didn't stay long at that company. I now work for a company that actually encourages blanks in order to discourage guessing. They also do actually talk to the doctors if there is a constant problem with their dictation. It is so refreshing. I now have an account I love and my line count has increased by over 100 lph because I no longer have to struggle to understand the doctors.

To Disgusted and Appalled - I am a very good MT

[ In Reply To ..]
No one said anything about not liking responsibility in MTing. It sounds like a very responsible MT who would complain about a dictator who makes her work look shoddy. When a dictator does not do their job, it makes the MT look shoddy is all. Geez, knock that chip off your shoulder. I happen to be a very responsible, reliable, skillful, knowledgeable, and professional MT, as many of us are, which makes the OP complaint a very valid one.

Disgusting & Appalling is your comment - And only ur comment

EXCELLENT point. - n/m

[ In Reply To ..]
.

Lately this is all I have been thinking!!! It's as - shortcake

[ In Reply To ..]
if these dictators are just reciting what they are reading as if it were a different language than their own!!!! This past week I have had several where sentences did not make any sense whatsoever and very clearly spoken, just did not make any sense. We are judged regarding the blanks but what are we supposed to do??? My acct happens to be verbatim (which makes me just cringe with what I actually have to type) but there are times I just can't have my name affiliated with what is being dictated and I do leave blanks. I often wonder what these doctors are taught as far as dictating. Isn't is scary to even think about us being eliminated and it all being on the dictator's shoulders to produce an accurate medical record. I'm never going to a doctor again.

never going to a doctor again - if you want--but be sure to...

[ In Reply To ..]
...get copies from the doctor/hospital if you do.

i get copies of notes any time i go to a doc (rarely, i'm glad to say) or hospital (usually for an emergent "ow").

each time, i get copies of my record.

hospitals are really prickly about that sometimes. i got a report from a hospital (auto accident), and read the ER doc's note. doc had dictated false information. when i called whoever at the hospital about this, i was asked, "why do you want your medical records??"

?????

ooooooooooooooookay.

i had made the call as an FYI "heads-up;" not complaining.

so i filed a formal report about "discrepancies" in the record.

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