Thursday, August 1, 2013

The Importance Of Professional Transcription Services

By Maryanne Goff


Professional transcription services are at a premium today, mainly because this is a service that is hard to automate, and needs a skilled transcriptionist equipped with the right tools. The key to it is in the details, since many professions need 100 percent accuracy in transcribed output. One single mistake in the data can be catastrophic for these clients.

Maybe it would be better to start from the concept and work upwards towards today's real-world needs and implementation solutions. As per definition, the business of transcription involves taking speech in some form (live or recorded audio/video) and converting it into text that can be stored as digital data. This is done by a transcriptionist who listens to the audio and types it as text.

It's not wrong to think that anyone with half a brain should be able to do this, but speed and accuracy are critical to this field. This is why only professionals can do this job, and even they need the help of hi-tech hardware and software tools to maintain accuracy while providing huge volume transcriptions. As a general rule, a 15-minute audio track must be transcribed within an hour.

There's also a fair bit of training and a learning curve involved. For instance, a medical transcription company needs to have transcriptionists with a sound knowledge about the field of medicine and the terminology. In fact, many transcription firms require candidates to have working experience as a nursing or pharmacy assistant.

Doctors record their diagnosis and everything they want included in a case file, and this audio then has to be transcribed perfectly. A single mistake can prove fatal to the patient, and would lead to a medical malpractice lawsuit. It could easily end the careers of the involved physicians and hospital or clinic administrators.

Another concern is the security provided for the audio files and transcribed data. In the U. S., health care providers are required to handle data in a manner that is HIPAA complaint and protects the security and privacy of patient records. Then there's also the issue of compatibility. The provider has to be able to provide text data in a format that is compatible with the naming protocols and standards required for the Electronic Medical Record (EMR/EHR) system used by the client.

Legal firms need just as high a level of accuracy as the health care industry. A lawyer may record several hours of depositions and then needs to have it transcribed verbatim, just like a court stenographer. Again, even a single error can cause the lawyer to lose a perfectly winnable case, and such clerical errors are also a cause for malpractice lawsuits.

Recorded speech transcriptions aside, there are many value-added professional transcription services that are in heavy demand. For instance, audio may be transcribed into text in several languages. Live video streams need closed captioning, and this is yet another area where no error will be tolerated since there is no verification process and it cannot be corrected. The bottom line here is that trying to get transcriptions done on the cheap often leads to be very expensive.




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